Kyiv is frustrated by the West’s lack of guarantees on accession to the alliance, as nations weigh up some difficult decisions

By Roland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

11 July 2023 • 9:02pm

Ukraine’s future is in Nato and it will not have to complete the alliance’s Membership Action Plan(MAP) when it joins.

The promise to skip the MAP is significant, and the mere inclusion of the word “invitation” was far from guaranteed.

But those victories are marred by the accompanying caveats.

It will join the alliance only “when allies agree”and “conditions are met” – in other words, it could be today, tomorrow, or 100 years down the line.

To put it politely, Nato’s Vilnius communique is that unhappiest of documents: a show of strength written by committee.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, was less generous. “It is unprecedented and absurd,” he said in a decidedly undiplomatic Twitter rant.

“We value our allies. We value our shared security. And we always appreciate an open conversation. Ukraine will be represented at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Because it is about respect. But Ukraine also deserves respect. Now, on the way to Vilnius, we received signals that certain wording is being discussed without Ukraine. And I would like to emphasize that this wording is about the invitation to become NATO member, not about Ukraine’s membership. It’s unprecedented and absurd when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about “conditions” is added even for inviting Ukraine. It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance. This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror. Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.”

Any Nato leaders or diplomats offended by his language should be reminded that they were warned.

Ukraine was first promised future Nato membership in 2008, but because of anxieties about upsetting Russia was never offered a timetable or pathway to getting it.

For many in Kyiv, it is obvious that ambiguity led directly to Russian invasion in 2014 and again in 2022.

Mr Zelensky and his diplomats have spent months trying to explain to Nato leaders that failing to fix it will only make another war more likely – and that they would not be polite about more “false promises”.

“We are not going to buy it,” Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said bluntly last month. 

“We will not play but the game offered to us – we will demand a change in policy, real substantial change in policy.”

He gave a particularly withering assessment of the diplomatic niceties some members thought could paper over a lack of progress.

The “Nato-Ukraine Council”, announced by Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, on Tuesday is a case in point.

It merely replaces an existing “commission”, which in diplomatese implies slightly less respect than a “council” but makes zero practical difference.

Ukraine and Nato: three possible outcomes

1. Nato membership: Ukraine’s stated goal is backed by the UK, Poland and France, but opposed by the United States and Germany. It would commit Nato members to come to Ukraine’s defence if it is attacked again. Kyiv said this was the only way to deter Russia from starting another war once the current conflict ends. But critics fear this could plunge Nato into a potential third World War.
2. “Israel-style” security guarantees: no specific model here, but it implies a cast-iron US and Western commitment to underwrite Ukrainian security outside the Nato alliance. The US has neither gone to war on Israel’s behalf nor has any binding commitment to do so. However, it has reliably extended billions of dollars worth of military aid, intelligence and diplomatic support for decades.
3. Bucharest 2008: The worst of all possible worlds in the view of Ukrainian officials and many of their Western allies. At Nato’s 2008 summit in the Romanian capital, George W Bush prevailed on European allies to extend Ukraine and Georgia a promise of membership. But others, conscious of Russian concerns, blocked a timetable or membership action plan. The compromise had the result of antagonising the Kremlin without offering Ukraine any tangible security. Ukrainian officials are clear that anything that smacks of a repeat will only lengthen the war.

Is Nato really planning to use Ukraine’s membership bid as a bargaining chip with Russia?

Mr Zelensky could be forgiven for thinking so.

When Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, unexpectedly changed French policy to back the British and Polish calls for swift Ukrainian accession, it was hailed as a major shift.

But Le Monde reported the thinking in the Elysee Palace as “tactical” and “a means of influencing the conflict and bringing Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table”.

Make of that what you will.

Another frustration for the Ukrainians are claims that it would be madness for Nato to admit a member who is in the middle of a shooting war.

They have asked for no such thing.

What they are asking for is a concrete path to membership and swift accession once the war is over.

There is immense sympathy for that point of view, particularly in Britain, Poland, and the Baltic States – and, since June, France.

But the sceptics in Germany and the United States should not be dismissed out of hand. They have got some serious points.

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, is right – the priority right now is winning the war. And until it is clear what the peace will look like, current Nato members will not be sure what they are committing to.

What if the war ends with Russia still holding some occupied territory, or in a Korean-style peace in which a temporary armistice is never followed by a formal end to hostilities?

That is why Joe Biden, the US president, and Mr Scholz prefer analogies to the West’s relationship with Israel – a Western ally outside Nato that is nonetheless the beneficiary of cast-iron but not really codified security guarantees.

But Israel also possesses an (unacknowledged) nuclear deterrent, something none of its adversaries have.

Ukraine is fighting the planet’s largest nuclear power and gave up its own nuclear weapons in 1994 – in exchange for security guarantees that proved useless.