Nato’s allies insist the door is open for Kyiv to join, but many are deeply divided over how fast that step should be taken
By Joe Barnes, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT and Nick Allen, US EDITOR
8 July 2023
Germany is set to insist on delaying Ukraine’s accession to Nato over fears the move could take the alliance to war with Russia.
An alliance source said Berlin would use the annual Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week to urge others to focus on security assurances, rather than membership proposals, to help Ukraine defend itself in the absence of accession.
“Berlin is stand-offish at the prospect of offering immediate membership,” the source told The Telegraph. “It wants a process and time to develop guarantees to essentially block membership.”
“Berlin doesn’t want to see Vladimir Putin potentially test Article 5.”
Under Nato’s alliance’s Article 5 clause, any member state attacked by an outside aggressor has the right to request military intervention from the rest of the allies.
Appearing to echo German concerns Joe Biden said he wanted to avoid a situation where “we’re all in the war, we’re in a war with Russia.”
Mr Biden added that Ukraine was “not ready” for Nato membership, and that it was “going to take a while”.
His national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: “We are not seeking to start World War Three. Ukraine will not be joining Nato coming out of this summit.”
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, has gradually ramped up his campaign for Ukraine to join Nato after Russia invaded last year, seeking to drive an unequivocal wedge between his country and Moscow.
The wartime leader has called for Nato’s 31 member states to take concrete steps towards Ukrainian membership so his country can quickly join the transatlantic alliance after the war.
Germany and the United States have privately warned the move could escalate the current conflict into an active war between Nato and Russia.
Mr Putin has often claimed that Nato’s expansion towards Russia’s borders over the past two decades was a key factor in his decision to invade Ukraine.
The Russian president has since threatened the use of nuclear weapons in the war, prompting fears of escalation in western countries.
The US, UK and EU states are currently drawing up a series of bilateral security offerings they hope will help defend Kyiv in absence of accession to Nato.
But Eastern leaders, like Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kallas, argue Ukraine should be offered a road map to accession at the summit on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Mr Biden said: “I don’t think there is unanimity in Nato about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the Nato family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.
“If the war is going on then we’re all in the war, we’re in a war with Russia, that would be the case.”
He said a “rational path” should be laid out for Ukraine to meet qualifications for membership, including “democratisation and a whole range of other issues.”
Mr Biden said he had spoken to Mr Zelensky “at length about this” and the US would, in the meantime, be ready to provide “security a la the security we provide for Israel.
“So I think we can work it out, but I think it’s premature to say to call for a vote ‘in now’.”
The US pays between two and four billion dollars a year to Israel between 2019 and 2028 to develop its military.
Nato allies are still negotiating on what exactly will be offered to Ukraine at the summit.
In a bid to hardball his Western partners, Mr Zelensky has threatened to skip the gathering unless he can deliver good news to his people after the meeting.
He said a statement signed by Nato in Bucharest in 2008 that said the “door is open” for Kyiv is not enough.
“We need some kind of signal, a clear one,” Mr Zelensky told reporters on a trip to the Czech Republic.
“That Ukraine will be in the alliance. Not that the door is open – this is not enough.”
Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, has already ruled out an official invitation for Kyiv at the summit, as expansion of the alliance requires the unanimous agreement of its 31 members.
Diplomats and officials have described their most likely offer to Kyiv as “Bucharest-plus”, in a sign it will build on their previous promise to admit Ukraine to the alliance, but not serve as an outright guarantee.
The security guarantees on the table, however, will make up for that, they add.
The US, Germany and France are understood to be working on a series of bilateral offers to concrete their support for Kyiv into legally-binding agreements.
It would cement the West’s lethal aid, as well as its training package, and future developments, such as the donation of F-16 fighter jets.
Individual national offers to Kyiv would then be placed under an umbrella agreement, a “Memorandum of Understanding”, which is endorsed by Nato and the EU
Sources said it was the “next best offer” to Kyiv, removing membership and Article 5 protection from the table for now.
Nato is nothing but a wank tank that consists mainly of members who either won’t fight Russia, don’t have the capability to fight Russia, or both. There is one powerful member that could fight Russia but never will: Turkey. There are even Russia satellites even inside Nato, such as Orbanistan. Nato is such an absurd organization that its members will fight and die for Orbanistan; a shithole that hates both Ukraine and Europe, but won’t lift a finger for Ukraine. Germany and France both caused putler’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine by blocking them and now they even have the support of Biden! You couldn’t make it up! France; mean as dirt in terms of military assistance to Ukraine, was an enabler for putler back in 2008. It sent the corrupt criminal putlerite Sarkozy to “negotiate” the end of the Georgia war. His solution? To give 20% of Georgia to putler. Remind you of someone?
Zel will be humiliated by Nato punks if he goes to their fucking meeting.
Cunts all of them. Except for Poland, the Balts, the Czechlands and Britain. As for Ukraine’s biggest benefactor, America, it is seemingly lurching violently between help and hindrance, simply because Biden sees Germany and France as America’s biggest friends. Well they are not. Both are swarming with people who hate both Britain and America and still have a soft spot for fucking Russia.
The frogs and putinaZis use the same term as a pejorative for the US and U.K. : the Anglo-Saxons!
As incredible as it sounds, today, fear and cowardice are still very solid ingredients of Western politics, as they were before the war. This is all the more astonishing when you see the downright stunning bravery of the Ukrainian people. If there was even a small bit of chicken DNA in the Ukrainian population, as the West seems to have plenty of, this war would’ve been lost a long time ago.
When will these cowards stop fearing the ruskie bear, who has been largely declawed by Ukraine and would never even think about starting another fight, seeing itself not even being able to handle Ukraine? This continued fear and cowardice baffles the mind.
Facts, I’d like to share with you some moving and inspirational words I received from a Ukrainian friend. I sent her my recent article about how we must give more help to Gen. Zaluzhnyi and this is part of her reply :
“These events are terrible and great at the same time. We have changed and matured a lot. And we realized how much we love our country. Everything will be fine, we know!”
“We are proud, that such extraordinary person as Zaluzhnyi is our General. And Zelensky is one of the most huge figure of modern history. I am sure, that a new world is being born in Ukraine, in which everyone will live happy life.”
Thank you for sharing, Scradge. The woman’s words are a clear reflection of what I’ve witnessed in Ukraine from those that I know there. The people have indeed matured and see their country in a way that seemed not possible before the fateful day of full-scale invasion. In this regard, Vlad has achieved something completely opposite of what he wanted.
With the actual useless “Government” we have in Germany, you never win any competition. The chancellor is the best putin lover at all, by all his actions to delay, delay, delay any decision.
With germans history in mind, germany should/must stand with ukraine strong from the first day on. Cause Nazi Germany has done the same what putinz raschists now do. That would be a strong sign of lessons learned. But german governments since the also awful Merkel has learned nothing.
So, it is as it is, a country of fearful rabbits.
As a german, i apologize for that insufficient behaviour of the country.
Please feel free to comment more often Mr Dreamworker!
Amen, Dreamworker, it is really good to see comments related to “lessons learned” from someone else. Sometimes I wonder if Germans know the full history of WWII in Ukraine. 6 million Ukrainians died fighting the nazis It was like a 2nd Holodomor 10 years after the first. It seems like German politicians are happy to keep feeding Ukrainians to the Russian bear so he doesn’t search for food somewhere else..