Before Ukraine can join NATO, it must first fight its way out of the purgatory

With less than three weeks to go until the NATO summit in Vilnius, allies are still undecided on what to offer Ukrainian President Zelensky, who is also present. There is no NATO membership, that’s clear, not now. But what is it?

Now that the war in Ukraine is (again) at an important juncture, the outside world, including President Putin, will primarily look to the upcoming NATO summit as a gauge of how deep and sustainable Western involvement in Ukraine’s defense will be — and whether allies are ready. To respect their 2008 decision to join Ukraine.

This decision came in 2008 in the wake of a sharp clash during the NATO summit in Bucharest between US President Bush and the German-French duo Merkel and Sarkozy. The Europeans did not want to offend Putin, the Americans wanted to go further. In the end, the leaders reached a paradoxical compromise during the meeting: Georgia and Ukraine “will become members,” but a concrete path to membership, the so-called Membership Action Plan (MAP), was denied to them.

Now, fifteen years later, Ukraine is knocking hard on the door, with key support from allies like Poland and the Baltic states. But this time the US and Germany agree that NATO accession is not forthcoming now, during the war. “We have to look at the situation cautiously,” German Chancellor Schulz said in the Bundestag on Thursday. There is also no specific timetable for Ukraine’s accession. No one can or will predict the course of the war.

What’s in the first aid kit?

While it is clear what Ukraine will not get, it is still not clear what it will. In talks this week with diplomats and NATO officials in Brussels, organized by the Atlantic Commission, journalists were told it was possible – as was the case in Bucharest at the time – that there was no Ukrainian text to leaders in advance that everyone agreed to.

What are the plasters intended for Ukraine in the first aid kit? There will be a NATO-Ukraine Council (now there is only a “committee”), which is an “honor” that has so far been given only to Russia. There would also be a larger package of “non-lethal support” from NATO (the alliance itself does not supply weapons), if the allies agreed to fund it.

Then there is the proposal to scrap MAP, the step-by-step plan towards accession that aspiring members have had to go through so far. After all, Ukraine, according to the idea, daily shows that it is a resilient democracy with the modernization of the Armed Forces. The message: after the war Ukraine will be able to join quickly.

But, critics say, won’t that give Putin a say in Ukraine’s accession? And when will the war end: with an armistice or only with a peace settlement (which, as in Korea, may never happen?). These are open questions that no one is willing or able to answer at the moment.

current needs

So key allies prefer to focus on what’s there now: Ukraine’s current needs and signal that they will continue to support Kiev “as long as necessary” with weapons, training, maintenance, and the like. That is why the second track, formally separated from NATO, is so important: the agreements that the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom want to conclude with Ukraine on long-term military assistance and support to the country.

They must make Ukraine so strong that no one wants to attack the country anymore. However, it remains uncertain whether such guarantees could actually be given in Vilnius.

For example, people in Brussels are working on suboptimal solutions that would mitigate the lack of the real prize – Ukrainian membership. Meanwhile, Zelensky and other officials are tempering high hopes for a summer offensive. Because it is also noticeable on the battlefield that the Western participation in the defense of the “partner country” is both very large and limited, due to political and other constraints.

With one arm behind the back

Without the help of the West, Ukraine simply would not exist. But because of the limitations of that assistance (which there are for obvious reasons), Kiev must – with one arm behind its back, in order not to dominate in the air – attack the entrenched occupier to show his ability to regain control of the country. .

This ambiguity, between strong support on the one hand and complete lack of support from the West on the other, is a consequence of the sharp dividing line that runs across Europe between NATO member and non-member states. In Poland and the Baltics, they feel safer since they joined. Kurt Volker, a former ambassador to NATO, said that Putin has a green light in the “gray areas”. And in that gray area, Ukraine continues to fight back against Putin’s large hordes.

Since the war, the Ukrainian ship has already gained a more realistic vision of a future in which it can sail to an EU and NATO port. But the truth is that it can still be smashed into the ground all the way, under the eyes of the West. This will never be acknowledged in NATO circles, but the “suboptimal results” must be taken into account.