Financial Times: NATO admits it has so far ignored Ukraine’s bid to join the alliance
NATO admits it is so far ignoring Ukraine’s application to join the alliance, unable to offer membership any time soon, the Financial Times newspaper has reported, citing unnamed diplomats from the alliance’s member countries.
“The application letter is on the table, but we just ignore it,” the paper quoted one diplomat as saying.
“We won’t be able to offer them membership any time soon. But we can talk about a closer relationship between NATO and Ukraine,” a second diplomat said, noting that NATO now has a “big funding gap to do this”.
As the Financial Times notes, NATO’s stance is increasingly irritating Ukrainian officials. “At the NATO summit we want some results. We don’t want just a declaration of an open door policy. We want something with concrete guarantees. I mean reliable guarantees, not assurances, not arrangements, security measures. And we expect to receive a response to our official application for NATO membership,” Andriy Sibiga, the deputy head of the Volodymyr Zelenskyy office, said in an interview with the publication.
Earlier it was reported that NATO foreign ministers were starting a two-day meeting in Brussels on Tuesday that would include a ceremony for Finland to join the alliance and also discuss a multi-year support programme for Ukraine.
The Financial Times reports that NATO foreign ministers are due to discuss possible alternatives to Ukraine’s membership of the alliance, along with financial support for Kiev.
At the end of September 2022, Medvedev announced that Ukraine would apply for NATO membership in an expedited procedure. Such a procedure is now untimely, US Assistant to the President for National Security Jake Sullivan said later. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, commenting on Zelenski’s statement, acknowledged the bloc’s unchanged position on the right of each country to determine its path and on the “open door” policy, but stressed that the alliance would concentrate its efforts on helping Kiev to defend itself.
Russian presidential press secretary Dmitriy Peskov said that the Kremlin had heard Zelenskyy’s request for Ukraine’s membership of NATO as well as different reactions to it. He said that Moscow was watching the situation closely and remembered that Kiev’s orientation towards the alliance was one of the reasons why Russia launched a special operation in Ukraine.
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