NATO Chief Sidesteps Question About Ukraine Joining Alliance

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks to the media prior to a meeting of foreign ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Dec. 3, 2024. Virginia Mayo/AP

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has sidestepped a question about Ukraine joining the alliance during a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday.

Rutte was reacting to a question from a journalist about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s comments on Monday that if the unoccupied territory of Ukraine was given NATO membership, it could end “the hot stage” of the war, which began in February 2022.

But Rutte, speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, said: “The front is not moving eastward. It is slowly moving westward.

“So we have to make sure that Ukraine gets into a position of strength, and then it should be for the Ukrainian government to decide on the next steps, in terms of opening peace talks and how to conduct them.”

NATO was founded on the principle of “collective defense,” and under Article 5 of its charter, any member who is attacked by a hostile country is guaranteed to have the military support of other members of the alliance.

At a NATO summit in Washington in July, leaders of the 32-member bloc agreed that Ukraine was on an “irreversible” path to membership.

But there is an unwillingness to let Ukraine join the alliance in the middle of a conflict with Russia, which has a large nuclear arsenal.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an updated nuclear doctrine, which lowers the threshold for using atomic weapons.

President-elect Donald Trump said during his election campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine quickly. Last week, Zelenskyy accepted the war would “end sooner” under the Trump administration.

In his speech on Tuesday, Rutte repeated that NATO wanted Ukraine to be able to negotiate from a “position of strength.”

He said, “I would argue, let’s not have all these discussions step by step on what a peace process might look like.”

Rutte said the first step must be to ensure “Ukraine has what it needs to get to a position of strength when those peace talks start.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer used similar language on Monday, saying the West must put Ukraine “in the strongest possible position for negotiations.”

The Ukrainian foreign ministry later issued a statement saying Kyiv would “not settle for any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO.”

It cited its “bitter experience” of the Budapest memorandum signed in 1994, in which Ukraine agreed to give up the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union on its territory in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and the UK.

“We are convinced that the only real guarantee of security for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent for further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the statement said.

Rutte was also asked about his meeting earlier this week with Trump, and he said he had stressed the strategic danger of Russia’s alliance with China and North Korea.

The NATO secretary general said, “Whenever we get to a deal on Ukraine, it has to be a good deal because what we can never have is high-fiving Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping and whoever else.”

Rutte also said NATO needed to be “active” in what it called its “southern neighborhood,” meaning Africa and the Middle East.

He said that was one of the reasons King Abdullah of Jordan was visiting NATO’s headquarters on Tuesday and why the alliance had opened an office in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Rutte said the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, had warned of the danger of Chinese and Russian influence in Africa and of the West not being involved there.

He said NATO would not seek new members from Africa or the Middle East or offer them the protection of Article 5, the mutual assistance clause available if any of the 32 members of the bloc are attacked.

However, he said, “NATO has to be active” in Africa and the Middle East by “building bilateral relations, by helping out when that is necessary, like we are doing through the mission in Iraq.”

“We cannot let the Russians and the Chinese in Africa, but also in the Gulf,” he added.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.