Ukraine will not join NATO during the Russian invasion

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that Ukraine will not join the alliance while it is at war.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
24 May 2023 Wednesday 10:24
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Ukraine will not join NATO during the Russian invasion

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that Ukraine will not join the alliance while it is at war. In an act organized by the organization German Marshall Fund in Brussels, Stoltenberg has said that the accession of Kyiv while the Russian invasion lasts. "Everyone has realized that becoming a member in the middle of the war is not on the agenda," he said, adding that the question really is "what will happen when the war ends one way or another."

In his speech, the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance admitted that there are "different views" among the allies on the Ukrainian candidacy for membership and stressed that in NATO decisions are made by consensus.

With Ukraine asking for its application to join the summit to be held in Vilnius in July to be accepted, the secretary general stressed that "no one can know what the final decision on the matter will be" at the meeting in the Lithuanian capital.

"The war ensures that Ukraine is getting even closer to NATO," stressed Stoltenberg, who stated that "when we start training pilots (Ukrainians in the management of American F-16 fighters), then of course there will be more interoperability, they will be closer to NATO by using more and more NATO equipment”.

Stoltenberg estimated that right now Ukraine "lives in two worlds", the former Soviet and the Western, due to the combination of military equipment they use. In that sense, he said that at the Vilnius summit they hope to adopt a multi-year plan for the allies to help Kyiv "in the transition from Soviet-era doctrines and equipment standards to NATO doctrines, equipment and standards." “This sounds a bit technical, but it is extremely important,” he stressed.

Likewise, he indicated that the allies are conducting consultations "on the way forward and how to address the ambitions of the Ukrainians to join NATO", so "no one can say exactly what the final decision of the summit will be on this issue. ”. “The most urgent and important task now is to ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign and independent nation. Because if Ukraine does not prevail, then there will be no accession issue to discuss, ”he summed up.