Before the NATO countries meet in Lithuania on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Zelenskyj is again calling for concrete security guarantees. However, there will probably not be a formal invitation to NATO, as Ukraine would like.
Shortly before the NATO summit in Lithuania, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again asked the NATO countries for clear security guarantees. Only under this condition does the meeting in the capital Vilnius make sense, he said in an interview with the US broadcaster ABC.
“We want all decisions to be made during the summit,” said Zelenskyy. “I don’t want to go to Vilnius for fun if the decision has already been made.”
The NATO summit in Vilnius starts on Tuesday. A key point of the talks will be continued support for Ukraine. It should also be about what security guarantees NATO can give the country after the end of the Russian war of aggression. Ukraine had previously requested a formal invitation to join NATO – but this is unlikely to happen.
Kirby: Ukraine must implement reforms
US President Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC on Saturday that he does not believe Ukraine is ready for NATO membership. “I don’t think there is a consensus in NATO on whether or not to include Ukraine in the NATO family now, in the middle of the war,” Biden said.
Ukraine still needs to implement some reforms to be able to join NATO, White House communications director John Kirby also told ABC. The country is also at war. NATO’s focus must therefore be to ensure that Ukraine is successful in its defensive struggle and has the time and space to work on the reforms.
At the summit, the NATO countries would make it clear that they continue to support the country in the fight against Russia and “that NATO will ultimately lie in Ukraine’s future,” Kirby said.
Topic overview
war in Ukraine
Makeiev: No more ambiguity
The Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, told the dpa news agency that NATO should no longer allow any ambiguity – even if Ukraine’s accession could not happen today or tomorrow. “At the Vilnius summit, we expect a clear invitation and direction to join NATO,” said Makeiev.
The mistakes made at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest should not be repeated, the ambassador said. At that time, Germany in particular, under the then Chancellor Angela Merkel, had resisted Ukraine’s rapid admission to the alliance. “If Ukraine had already been a member of NATO in 2014, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbass and now the Russian large-scale war of aggression would certainly not have happened,” Makeiev said.
hope for more weapons shipments
The ambassador also reaffirmed his hope for further arms deliveries from Germany. The Russian armed forces have moved their military infrastructure well over 100 kilometers behind the front line, he told the dpa. “To break this logistics, we need weapons with the appropriate range.”
According to Makeiev, the Ukrainian government is in close contact with the federal government about Taurus cruise missiles from Germany. Britain has already delivered its Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
Ukraine had already applied to the federal government in May for the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles with a range of up to 500 kilometers. The federal government has not yet made it available because it can also be used to reach Russian territory.
Hofreiter calls for less restraint
The Green politician Anton Hofreiter called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to give up his reluctance. “It is important that Scholz sets an example at the NATO summit with a view to arms deliveries – especially given the difficult situation at the front,” he said. “If the British deliver cruise missiles, I see no reason why Germany can’t do the same.” Hofreiter also demanded that Germany participate in the alliance led by Denmark and the Netherlands to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine – with training and logistics.
Ambassador Makeiev stressed that this is not a priority for him. “If our German partners could also support us in the fighter jet alliance, we would like to discuss that in more detail,” he said. “But first it is important to us that the German weapons that have already been promised reach us before we start a new discussion.”