US, Hungary, Slovakia block Ukraine’s NATO bid, Secretary General says

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has confirmed that the United States, Hungary, and Slovakia are opposed to Ukraine joining the alliance.

Speaking on the matter, Rutte indicated that while Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO remain a topic of discussion, key member states have expressed clear reservations, Caliber.Az reports, citing Russian media.

The opposition from these countries highlights the complex geopolitical and strategic considerations surrounding Kyiv’s potential accession to the alliance.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has said it’s willing to give up its aspirations to join NATO in return for security guarantees, as part of a peace deal to end the almost four-year war with Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to drop Kyiv’s NATO dreams during five hours of talks with US officials Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Berlin over the weekend.

Ukraine’s offer marks a major policy shift. It has long coveted membership of the Western military alliance, whose members are obliged to consider an attack on one as an attack on all under Article 5 of the NATO treaty.

Zelenskyy said that the offer to drop NATO membership in return for security guarantees was a compromise, amid resistance among some of its Western allies to its NATO bid.

“From the very beginning, Ukraine’s conditions – or perhaps more accurately, our ambition – was NATO membership. And that would have provided real security guarantees. Some partners from the United States and Europe did not support this direction,” he said in answer to questions from reporters.

“That is why today the bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States, specifically Article 5–like guarantees from the United States for us, and the security guarantees from our European colleagues for us, as well as from other countries such as Canada and Japan – these security guarantees for us provide an opportunity to prevent another outbreak of Russian aggression,” Zelenskyy commented.

“And this already is a compromise on our part,” he said.

Despite Ukraine publicly abandoning its NATO bid, the chances of it joining the alliance were vanishingly thin. Several members were resistant to the idea, including Slovakia and Hungary. Even Ukraine’s allies within NATO worried about poking the Russian bear beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Moscow vehemently opposes Ukraine joining NATO, and Russia has claimed the alliance’s expansion in Eastern Europe was one of the reasons it launched its so-called “special military operation” against Ukraine in 2022.

Kyiv insists that security guarantees must be a part of a peace deal instead of NATO membership, and this remains a sticking point in negotiations with Moscow, which is refusing to allow Ukraine’s allies to be part of any peacekeeping force in the country.

By Vafa Guliyeva