Kyiv issues ultimatum on NATO membership
Ukraine is losing hope that the alliance will invite it to join anytime soon.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha issued a pointed message to NATO Tuesday, saying that Kyiv “will not accept” any security guarantees other than full NATO membership.
In a letter addressed to his NATO counterparts, Sybiha said that “the only real security guarantee for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent to further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is Ukraine’s full membership in NATO.”
“We will not accept any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” he said, adding that only such a move would counter Russian aggression.
He pointed out that past agreements, such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which was supposed to protect Ukraine after it gave up its nuclear weapons, turned out to be meaningless.
“Not providing Ukraine with real, effective security guarantees in the 1990s was a strategic mistake that Moscow exploited. This mistake must be corrected,” Sybiha wrote.
The letter comes ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss ongoing support for Ukraine. Despite Kyiv’s call, no significant steps toward inviting Ukraine into the alliance are expected during the summit.
Officials in Kyiv are increasingly losing hope that Ukraine will enter the military alliance any time soon, with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump proposing to delay Ukraine’s NATO membership for at least 20 years as part of a potential peace deal with Russia.
“I think that the moment that could have been for an invitation to NATO was not used by the current administration,” Ukraine’s Justice Minister Olga Stefanishyna said last week, commenting on current U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.
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