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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has urged his NATO counterparts to issue an invitation at a meeting in Brussels next week to Kyiv to join the Western military alliance, according to the text of a letter seen by Reuters on Friday.
The letter reflects Ukraine's renewed push to secure an invitation to join NATO, which is part of a "victory plan" outlined last month by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to end the war triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion.
Ukraine says it accepts that it cannot join the alliance until the war is over but extending an invitation now would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could not achieve one of his main goals - preventing Kyiv from becoming a NATO member.
"The invitation should not be seen as an escalation," Sybiha wrote in the letter.
"On the contrary, with a clear understanding that Ukraine's membership in NATO is inevitable, Russia will lose one of its main arguments for continuing this unjustified war," he wrote.
"I urge you to endorse the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministerial Meeting on 3-4 December 2024."
NATO diplomats say there is no consensus among alliance members to invite Ukraine at this stage. Any such decision would require the consent of all NATO's 32 member countries.
NATO has declared that Ukraine will join the alliance and that it is on an "irreversible" path to membership. But it has not issued a formal invitation or set out a timeline.
Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister in charge of NATO affairs, said Kyiv understood that the consensus for an invitation to join NATO "is not yet there" but the letter was meant to send a strong political signal.
"We have sent a message to the allies that invitation is not off of the table, regardless of different manipulations and speculations around that," she told Reuters.
In his letter, Sybiha argued an invitation would be the right response "to Russia's constant escalation of the war it has unleashed, the latest demonstration of which is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons".
In recent days, however, diplomats have said they do not see any changes of stance among NATO countries, particularly as they await the Ukraine policy of the United States - the alliance's dominant power - under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
© Thomson Reuters 2024.
10 Comments
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JJE
Here is the riot act:
The European invasion routes onto the steppes of Russia shall remain neutral. Any offensive entity gets an Iskander welcome - and more.
Blacklabel
Not happening.
get to the negotiation table to stop the war.
JJE
Only a village fool entertains this prospect:
Russia will react harshly to stop it.
European stocks of money and munitions are empty.
US stocks are low too.
And they have other priorities (and paying customers too).
Moscow will Article 5 them - should the threats increase.
Widely known this is a rudderless administration. Don't poke.
plasticmonkey
How dare Ukrainians attempt to defend their own sovereignty! How dare they!
Blacklabel
What part is “their own”?
Fighting with our money our weapons and lost. and now begging protection from our NATO.
So our children can die for them too?
wallace
Ukraine's NATO membership 20 years later is an answer to the aggression of Putin. NATO troops will not be fighting in Ukraine.
Some dude
I wish that were the case. But I have my doubts.
They should be given immediate membership (and then NATO should then ignore Putin's endless toothless threats and wipe Russia off the map once and for ever), but I don't have much faith in any bloated bureaucracy, be it NATO or anything else. There will be aspirational speeches, lots of hand-wringing, and in the end Ukraine will be shafted due to the inertia (and the inherent evil nature of man, but that's a philosophical issue).
I once saw a debate on why evil generally wins in the end, and someone made a good point: evil has no guardrails and will do literally everything to ensure victory. Good is handicapped by...well, its own nature.
FizzBit
LOL
Sounds pretty evil to me
Primusinter
Do you believe that it's possible? The question is rhetorical, you don't have to answer it. How old are you, kindergarten?
ok1517
Let Ukraine join NATO!
The sooner, the better!
They are already protecting Europe and the free world against Putain's marauders!
In addition this would finally show Putain the red lines, he's always talking about!
Remember, we still have not been nuked despite his, Madvedev's and Laugrov's threats!
Primusinter
TG channel INSIDER-T
"Kremlin sources said that Russia would never agree to the condition of ending the conflict, which includes Ukraine's membership in NATO in any territorial composition. This issue is fundamental and not subject to discussion, and all Zelensky's attempts to manipulate the topic with the Alliance are necessary to create conditions for the conflict."
Blacklabel
is this “winning”? That they hadn’t nuked us (yet)?