As Russian forces continue to make gains on the battlefield, Ukraine’s longstanding hope of joining NATO remains in limbo—caught between vague assurances emanating from Washington and dire warnings from Moscow.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised eyebrows when he appeared to state unequivocally that Ukraine “will become a member of NATO.”
“Our purpose ... is to help build a bridge to that membership,” Washington’s top diplomat said.
He made the remarks at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, where the alliance celebrated the passage of 75 years since its establishment on April 4, 1949.
But the event was more than just an anniversary party.
It also featured a meeting of the NATO–Ukraine Council, a joint body that aims to advance Kyiv’s longstanding goal of joining the alliance.
At the meeting, alliance members “reaffirmed that Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” Mr. Blinken told reporters.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also appeared to stress the inevitability of Kyiv’s accession to the transatlantic alliance.
In advance of an upcoming NATO summit in Washington, he said, allies would be “working together to cement Ukraine’s path toward NATO membership.”
Addressing NATO foreign ministers a day earlier, Mr. Stoltenberg said, “All allies agree that Ukraine will become a member; all allies agree that we need to continue to move Ukraine closer to NATO membership.”
The NATO chief also used the occasion to propose a 100-billion-euro fund (roughly $108 billion) to shore up Ukraine’s embattled military over the next five years.
Kyiv, for its part, has made no secret of its desire to join the alliance, which currently boasts 32 members after the recent accessions of Finland and Sweden.
Speaking at last week’s gathering in Brussels, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said it was “up to the allies themselves to decide on the form and the content of the next step toward Ukraine’s membership in NATO.”
“We will be looking forward to the outcome, but we believe that Ukraine deserves to be a member of NATO and that this should happen sooner rather than later,” Mr. Kuleba said.
Article 5 and Fears of Wider Conflict
Kyiv first applied for NATO membership in 2022, six months after Russia began its invasion of Eastern Ukraine.But last summer, at a landmark NATO summit in Lithuania, Kyiv failed—despite expectations—to receive a formal invitation to join the alliance.
At the time, NATO members promised to extend an invitation to Ukraine “when allies agree and conditions are met.”
Instead, Kyiv was assured of NATO’s support in the form of bilateral “security guarantees” with individual members, several of which have since been signed.
To join NATO, Ukraine must first obtain the approval of all current members, some of which voice reservations, fearing direct confrontation with Russia.
According to Article 5 of NATO’s founding charter, allies are obliged to defend fellow members in the event they come under external attack.
Were Ukraine to join the alliance now, NATO members would automatically become parties—de jure—to the ongoing conflict.
In January, Robert Fico, prime minister of NATO member Slovakia, pledged to veto any future membership bid by Kyiv so as to avert a “third world war.”
The notion of Ukraine’s joining the alliance—while it remains at war—has also drawn fire from prominent political figures in the United States.
Responding to Mr. Blinken’s remarks, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) wrote in a post on X: “Ukraine should not join NATO ... to invite them during a war is to invite our nation into war.
“Do you want American ground troops in Ukraine? If not, we must push back against the idea that Ukraine should join NATO.”
On April 8, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller sought to clarify Mr. Blinken’s comments, saying the process of Ukraine’s accession to NATO—if it happens—would only begin once the conflict is over.
“There were discussions while the secretary [Mr. Blinken] was at NATO about Ukraine,” Mr. Miller told reporters.
“We have made clear for some time that, ultimately, that’s a process that moves forward at the end of this conflict.”
According to foreign policy expert Jim Townsend, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO, Mr. Miller’s clarification did not constitute a “walking-back” of the secretary of state’s earlier remarks.
“Blinken was just expressing what many in the administration feel, which is to get Ukraine into NATO quickly,” Mr. Townsend told The Epoch Times.
“But the length of the conflict will dictate how quickly that will be.”
Summit Agenda Still Unclear
It appears unclear whether Ukraine’s sought-for accession to NATO will be on the agenda at the Washington summit, which is slated for mid-July.“These conversations over the last couple of days have been focused on exactly what we’re going to do at the summit,” Mr. Blinken told reporters in Brussels.
“We’ve begun a process among all the countries, and with all the experts, to flesh that out.
“We’ll be using the time between now and the summit to do exactly that.”
According to Mr. Townsend, Ukraine’s NATO accession bid “will likely not be a discrete item on the agenda.”
“But it will be discussed by the summiteers, along with a NATO assistance package,” he said.
Responding to a question from The Epoch Times, a State Department spokesperson declined to comment explicitly on whether the topic of Ukraine’s membership bid would be broached at the summit. Rather, the spokesperson said that the upcoming summit in Washington would serve to “reinforce key elements.”
According to the spokesperson, those key elements will include “an iron-clad commitment to Article 5 ... and an alliance which has grown to 32 countries—with an unwavering open-door policy.”
Russian officials have continued to warn against the potentially dire ramifications of Ukraine’s admittance to the Western alliance.
From the outset, Moscow has claimed that its invasion of Ukraine was a “natural response” to NATO’s eastward expansion over the past 25 years.
Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that relations between Russia and NATO had already reached the point of “direct confrontation.”
NATO, he said on April 4, is “already involved in the Ukraine conflict while continuing to encroach on [Russia’s] borders and expand its military infrastructure.”
This week, Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, reiterated Moscow’s “firm opposition” to Ukraine’s accession to NATO, claiming that such a move would constitute “a threat to Russia’s national security.”
“Ukraine’s entry into NATO is unacceptable to us under any circumstances,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s TASS news agency on April 9.
“Statements by U.S. officials regarding Ukraine’s membership in the alliance only confirm that unconditional victory on the battlefield is the only option for us.”
