NATO summit without Zelenskyy? Ukraine president sets condition to alliance

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not attend the next NATO summit if Kyiv does not receive an invitation to join the alliance, said Igor Zhovkva, a diplomatic adviser to the Ukrainian leader. The diplomat recalled that Ukraine submitted the relevant application on September 30, 2022, and expects that the next meeting of representatives of the alliance member states in Vilnius on July 11-12 will give an answer to it.

"This application is now on the tables of the leaders of NATO allies. The Vilnius summit would be a very good start to respond to this application. And by respond, we mean invitation for membership, which is only the first stage," Reuters quotes Zhovkva.

According to him, "if there is no result at the Vilnius summit, he [Zelenskyy] doesn't have reason and time to go". He also drew attention to the fact that last year Sweden and Finland also applied to join NATO, and Helsinki has already joined the alliance.

Kyiv considers it possible to resolve this issue, given the war with Russia, Zelenskyy's adviser said. During the confrontation, Ukraine has demonstrated that the country deserves to be part of Transatlantic security. "We ask you to start the procedure," Zhovkva stressed.

The final decision whether to go to the summit or not should be made by the Ukraine president on the eve of the event, his office said earlier. Meanwhile, according to Reuters, Zelenskyy's absence at the summit will overshadow any demonstration of Western unity.

The invitation does not mean membership itself, but it is a clear indication of the prospects, which is what Kyiv is seeking from NATO. What is preventing consensus on this issue from the bloc’s member countries? What motivates some of them? Fear of Russia? Did President Zelenskyy do the right thing by notifying ahead of time that he would not go to the NATO summit if he did not receive an exhaustive answer on this issue? Well-known foreign experts answered these questions by Caliber.Az.

Military analyst, Ukraine’s Security Service officer (2004-2015) Ivan Stupak first of all noted that all the countries of the alliance, according to the charter, should vote for an invitation to join a new member. "Not a simple majority, not 70 per cent, not 60 per cent, but 100 per cent. That is, if 32 member countries of the alliance are present at the upcoming summit in Vilnius, then all of them should speak in favour. However, we have problematic aspects in this sense. At least with Hungary we will have to resolve the issue of its consent. This is due to the so-called language issue of Transcarpathian Hungarians living in the west of Ukraine. Budapest protects them from something unclear, demands to amend our law on education, which states that the main language in the country is only Ukrainian. That is, we still have to fight with Hungary. The position of a number of other countries is not fully clear. France had separate questions," the expert said.

At the same time, the former security officer ignores the unwillingness of several North Atlantic bloc states to anger Russia again for reasons of their own security, instead focusing only on the potential of Ukraine joining the alliance.

"But there are already questions about how Ukraine will be incorporated into the European Community. They see that Ukraine is fully ready militarily. Indeed, there is experience, knowledge and skills. Software, logistics - all according to Western standards. The legislative framework, the reform of law enforcement agencies and special services – this is also required, without this there is no way to join the organisation. And a very important point is the English language. That is, all military personnel should be proficient in this language at a serious technical level. This is also an issue that needs to be resolved," Stupak lists.

“I think President Zelenskyy is doing the right thing when he says that he will not go to the summit if there is no clear understanding of why he is going there. Just to hear once again that the doors of the alliance are open to Ukraine is no longer interesting. ‘Too much for Athos, and too little for the Comte de la Fere,’ I quote in such cases from a famous film. Therefore, the president wants to hear a clear list of issues that Ukraine has to solve as homework to become a full member of the alliance. Not just ‘democratisation of society, raising standards’ (which it is not clear what to measure – in kilograms, in rolls, in cubic metres), but a clear list of tasks that Ukraine must fulfil over a period of time.

Personally, I believe Ukraine will join the alliance on the day the war ends plus two years. That is, during this time, the government will be able to put in order the legislative framework, the military industry, and the military-industrial complex," the military analyst said.

Vadim Galaichuk, a member of Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada from the ruling party Servant of the People, the first deputy leader of the parliamentary committee on Ukraine's EU integration, and a member of the permanent Ukrainian delegation to the OSCE PA, is even more unequivocal. "President Zelenskyy provided a clear understanding of a problem that is obvious to us, but unfortunately not to all NATO leaders: the only effective way to limit Russia's aggressive imperial ambitions and ensure a stable and just peace on the European continent is through Ukraine's full integration into the EU and NATO," he said.

"When Putin realised in 2008 after the Bucharest NATO summit that Western leaders were divided on the fate of the postgraduate countries - Ukraine and Georgia, there was an invasion of Georgia, and then Ukraine. Therefore, if we do not receive a clear signal about what results are expected from the Vilnius summit, we cannot assess its potential effectiveness. Well, since President Zelenskyy now has an extremely busy working schedule on the internal agenda, the president's closest advisers express doubts about the need for the president to attend the summit in the absence of understanding that an agreement has been reached on what will be the plan for Ukraine's integration into the Euro-Atlantic space," the MP summed up.