The NATO summit in Vilnius kicked off on Tuesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to raise the issue of the country’s NATO membership again during the meeting. In addition, the alliance’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg may officially announce the deployment of 300,000 military personnel in Europe and additional measures to strengthen the bloc. What does this mean for Russia?
Source photo: idsb.tmgrup.com
Just a day before the summit meeting it became clear that Germany and the United States intend to block Ukraine’s application to join the alliance. This was reported by the German newspaper Bild with reference to sources. In addition, according to the sources, Berlin and Washington are putting pressure on other countries of the alliance to join their position.
It is specified that the USA and Germany plan to sign a declaration with Ukraine that “hardly goes beyond the document signed in Bucharest in 2008”. This means support for a general course in NATO without any specifics. Bild also found out that Zelensky, having learnt about such plans, was allegedly very angry.
However, the disappointments of Zelensky’s office did not end there. Thus, the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Dmytro Kuleba, said on his social media accounts that his country had simplified the path to membership in the military bloc by cancelling the Membership Action Plan (MAP). He also welcomed this “long-awaited decision”.
However, just hours later, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a rebuttal to the report. The alliance is discussing a package of proposals for Ukraine that would remove the need to implement the MAP, but no decision has been made yet, he explained.
A separate issue is the work of the Ukraine-NATO Council. The Wall Street Journal points out that Ukraine will have the right to convene meetings of the Council, will be able to set up working committees and make decisions that will be binding for other countries. Former NATO assistant secretary-general Kamil Grand pointed out in this regard that the Ukraine-NATO Council will be more important than many people think.
“The US and Germany, as core NATO countries, recognise the obvious truth – Ukraine has no place in the alliance now. The country’s inclusion in the alliance will have enormous security and economic consequences. Moreover, Ukraine is in a position to simply collapse the bloc from within,” says Stanislav Tkachenko, professor of the Department of European Studies at the Faculty of International Relations of St. Petersburg State University and an expert of the Valdai Club.
“At the same time, other candidate countries for the role of blocking the application do not pull. For example, even Turkey could not realise this issue. The topic of Ukraine in the current conditions is too important politically and calls into question the existence of the alliance in its current form. Vetting of Zelensky’s application is a clear sign that Ukraine will not join the alliance until the military conflict is over, this issue has been put on pause,” the expert predicts.
“Berlin has always been less disposed to give Ukraine direct commitments. After all, NATO membership itself is half the battle. The fifth article of the alliance’s charter, which guarantees protection to all members of the alliance, is of much greater concern to Germany. “Here trivial support and assistance will not do, we will have to send troops,” adds Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Politics and scientific director of the Valdai International Dialogue Centre.
“Accordingly, as long as NATO expansion was not associated with the risks of introducing real troops, everything was done easily and simply. Now the situation is completely different. Therefore, countries such as Germany, which initially felt apprehension, feel even more anxious,” the political scientist continues.
“As for the United States, it is the main fighting force of NATO. Washington can fully appreciate all the risks of such an expansion of the alliance to the East,” the interlocutor notes ironically. “One thing is the support, which not only does not stop, but also intensifies. This story is happening on a conditionally voluntary basis – the states have decided that it is necessary to help Ukraine, so they help. If they get fed up, they can stop doing it without any aggravating consequences for them. With NATO membership this will not be possible,” Lukyanov argues.
“As for the MAP, I would not attach much importance to it. If Ukraine’s accession to NATO becomes a reality, the usual procedure will be out of the question. Initially, this procedure is applicable to medium-sized Central European countries. But here we are talking about a large warring state. In this case, it would be strange to start the story with formal criteria such as MAP,” Lukyanov believes.
NATO’s overall plans
Last Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the Alliance intends to deploy about 300,000 troops in Europe. At the same time, all of them will be in a high degree of combat readiness. It is specified that a significant proportion of the contingent will be air and sea combat forces.
In addition, within the framework of the Vilnius summit, NATO plans to adopt three defence plans to “combat the main threats” – Russia and terrorism. One plan is for the North and Atlantic, another for Central Europe, and the third for the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions.
The Secretary General also noted that NATO members at the summit will set 2% of GDP as the minimum annual defence spending. The alliance plans to increase military spending by 8.3 per cent in 2023. Among European allies and Canada, this will be the biggest increase in decades.
As experts note, the alliance will not stop there. “For example, the deployment of 300,000 troops is of great importance in the context of potential threats to Russia. One thing is the statements sounded earlier. And quite another is real actions,” Fyodor Lukyanov notes. “The Alliance is deploying additional forces, actively strengthening. We have moved into a full-scale cold war in its most acute form. And here, unfortunately, it would be naive to believe that NATO will remain the same organisation it was for the previous decades,” he notes.
“The North Atlantic Alliance is once again pushing the situation towards another rather serious round of escalation between the bloc and Russia. What is important is not even the fact of deploying the contingent, but the fact that it will be on high alert. That is, in a very short time these forces can be redeployed to the western borders of our country,” adds Stanislav Tkachenko.
“Obviously, Russia cannot leave these actions unattended. I do not rule out that the alliance itself may regard the decisions taken as something symbolic, designed for many years. Moreover, they may hope that they will never have to fully implement what they have planned,” the interlocutor argues.
“We should undoubtedly regard this as a fact and react accordingly. I believe that part of this activity is already underway. Finland’s accession to NATO has led to the creation of new military districts and armies. In this regard, we can say that Russia is morally prepared for the alliance to escalate near our borders,” Tkachenko concluded.
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