Expert: Ukrainian army can join NATO already now Alas, the Alliance accepts states, not the armies

In an interview with Caliber.Az, Ivan Us, chief consultant of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies of the National Institute for Strategic Studies of Ukraine, has said that he expects the rules for admission to NATO to change.

- In mid-July the Lithuanian capital Vilnius will host a NATO summit where Ukraine's accession to the alliance is likely to be considered. However, US President Joe Biden said in advance that Washington will not seek to simplify the process of Ukraine's accession to the North Atlantic bloc. According to Biden, despite the fact that Ukraine has done a lot to demonstrate its military capabilities, Kyiv needs to adhere to the standards that all other alliance countries have. And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explicitly announced that Ukraine would not be invited to join the alliance at this summit, specifying, however, that the country would still "at some point become a member of NATO". In this connection what do you think Ukraine should expect from the forthcoming NATO summit?

- Personally, I can hardly imagine that Ukraine will become a NATO member before the war is over - the US and some European countries will not agree to it. But I do not exclude that at the summit in Vilnius, there will be more concretization of its perspectives to join this organization. I think there will also be discussions of Poland's and Baltic countries' proposals to develop a compensation mechanism for Ukraine for the period until it gets NATO membership. Such a decision would be a significant motivating factor for its acceptance as soon as the war is over. Furthermore, this summit will emphasise the commitment of NATO countries to continue military support to Ukraine, no matter how long the war lasts.

- Does the reluctance to accept Ukraine into NATO have anything to do with the many corruption scandals that have implicated the country's Ministry of Defence?

- The high level of corruption and the likely large number of Russian Federation spies among the Ukrainian leadership, together with the corruption scandals in which the Ministry of Defense has been implicated, are significant obstacles to the country's NATO and EU membership. These are the factors behind US President Joe Biden's statements that the US will not seek to simplify the process of Ukraine's accession to NATO. In fact, they have the same weighty influence on other NATO member states.

- Given all this, when can Kyiv expect full membership in the alliance?

- Andrius Kubilius, the former prime minister of Lithuania, said not long ago that it was likely that Ukraine would become a NATO member in 2024 and an EU member in 2029. I think this is too optimistic a prognosis. There is a good saying that the Ukrainian army can be taken to NATO already now. But it is not the army that is taken to NATO, but the state. And there is a problem here. Still, once the war is over, I expect the rules for admission to NATO to change. Probably it will be a new rule about the introduction of a new status: "provisional member of NATO", the essence of which will be that the country is taken into the alliance for one year with the obligation to strengthen the fight against corruption at different levels. And on the results of this struggle in a year will be decided whether to keep it in the organization or not. A kind of probationary period.

- Azerbaijan does not seek NATO membership. In the meantime, Azerbaijan and Türkiye signed the Shusha Declaration, according to which an attack on one country means an attack on both our countries. Would it make more sense for Ukraine to follow the same path, concluding similar military and political alliances with Poland, the Baltic states, and other NATO member states?

- Once the war is over, it is quite possible that there will be such an agreement with Poland, the Baltic states, and the UK. By the way, at the beginning of the full-scale war, there was talk of a military alliance between those countries, Ukraine and Türkiye, but it remained a rumour. At the same time, since Ukraine still aspires to join NATO, such an agreement, as well as the possible status of "the main US military partner outside NATO," like, say, Qatar, could postpone the actual accession for a long time and become an alternative to it. And it is not in Ukraine's interest.

- The Russian-Ukrainian war is not yet over, but certain results can already be drawn. What has it demonstrated, how much has the overall balance of power in the world changed since the war began?

- The main result of all these months of the war is that the whole world has seen that the Russian army is not the second army in the world. This has led to a reassessment of attitudes in many countries around the world. I should add the fact that the Russian economy has gone from surplus to deficit. And this, too, is a result of the war. In addition, this war was a second wind for NATO. Before the war, the alliance was a kind of a "lame duck", whose member countries did not even come close to complying with the organization's defence spending requirement of 2 per cent of their GDP. But almost all NATO members are now raising their military expenditures. Sweden and Finland, which had been neutral for years (there was even a term "Finlandization"), have dramatically changed their policy and want to join NATO. And Ukraine has seen in practice that it has good armed forces, the country has received a motivator for unification. Whereas regional attitudes to NATO and the EU in Ukraine used to differ significantly, there is now a unity of opinion across all regions in support of the course of these Western alliances. The historically formed division of Ukraine into west and east, if not yet completely, has been significantly erased.