MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2023) Allies are pressuring Washington and Berlin to demonstrate more support for Ukraine in terms of potential NATO membership, the Financial Times reports citing officials.
Other NATO members have been surprised by the "conservative" US and German stance, which does not entail coming up with a "pathway" for Ukraine joining NATO, the officials told the newspaper on Sunday.
Two officials said the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and other allies plan to announce a broad agreement at the summit that will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania from July 11-12, which will include bilateral pledges of support to Kiev, but this broad deal could be delayed until after the summit.
On Sunday, NATO ambassadors failed to reach a compromise on the text of the NATO leaders' statement, so it could be finalized at the summit itself, the Financial Times said.
On Saturday, The Telegraph reported that Germany plans to insist during the upcoming NATO summit that Ukraine should not be granted NATO membership. The newspaper said that the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union were working on "Bucharest-plus" - a series of bilateral security offerings to Kiev - instead of offering Ukraine NATO membership. Individual offers of security guarantees to Kiev would then be combined into an umbrella deal, a "Memorandum of Understanding," endorsed by NATO and the EU.
Ukraine applied for a fast-tracked membership in NATO in September 2022 following the start of the Russian military operation in February of that year. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has on numerous occasions said that the bloc was supportive of Kiev's aspirations but was not ready to approve its application right away, chiefly due to Ukraine's active involvement in an armed conflict.
In early June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kiev hoped to receive a clear invitation to join the bloc at the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on July 11-12. He also said the Ukrainian military was disappointed that Ukraine had not yet received a clear positive response about joining both the European Union and NATO.
On June 19, Stoltenberg said that the top-level summit in July would not discuss a formal invitation, but rather ways to "move Ukraine closer to NATO."
