Ukraine will not become a member of the North Atlantic Alliance in the near future. The reasons for this were described by columnist Hal Brands on Sunday, February 19, in an article for the agency Bloomberg.
Brands gives two options for the future of Ukraine after the end of the conflict. The first of them, according to him, provides for the country’s membership in NATO, which Kyiv undoubtedly very much desires, since “membership in NATO provides the gold standard of security guarantees.”
But this will not happen because of the rules of the alliance, which do not allow the candidate to begin the process of joining in territorial disputes or armed conflicts with other states, the observer argues.
“NATO does not accept countries with ongoing border disputes, not to mention semi-frozen conflicts on their territory. Therefore, Kyiv can be left out, become a victim of the cruel irony that the very condition that makes NATO membership desirable also makes it impossible.
The second, more realistic version of the future of Ukraine provides, according to the author, the connection of Kiev with the West, in which the country “formally will not be an ally of the alliance, while having a very powerful army to protect its own independence.”
Under this option, Western countries will continue to advise and help train the Ukrainian military, and will continue to supply Kyiv with the weapons and supplies it needs to defend itself as the conflict has almost completely destroyed the country’s economy.
“Thus, Ukraine is likely to remain under the economic tutelage of the West, while Washington and its allies will finance the country’s defense for the foreseeable future. Even if Kyiv is not going to join NATO, the end of the war can only be the beginning of the West’s commitment to Ukraine,” Brands concluded.
The day before, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said that Ukraine expects to receive an invitation to join NATO in June, at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius, which is scheduled for June 11-12, 2023.
Prior to this, on February 14, American Thinker columnist Oleksandr Markovsky wrote that the Ukrainian authorities’ desire to achieve NATO membership could cost the state dearly. He stressed that Kyiv’s desire to join the North Atlantic Alliance at any cost has already become a mistake of historic proportions.
In particular, active steps in this direction affected the interests of the Russian Federation, which opposed the expansion of NATO to the east, perceiving this process as an existential threat. Neglect of Moscow’s position was one of the factors that provoked today’s conflict.
On February 9, the head of the administration of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Gergely Guiyash, said that Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Alliance would mean the start of a world war.
In September 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his country had applied to join NATO on an accelerated basis. However, Assistant to the US President for National Security Jake Sullivan stressed that the expansion of the alliance is now untimely.
The special operation to defend Donbass, which Putin announced on February 24, continues. The decision was made against the background of the aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.
