Despite Ukraine’s pursuit to gain entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the recent summit held in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius put only one country on the path toward membership — Sweden.
Sweden’s membership had long been blocked by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The two countries reportedly settled their disagreements, with Sweden notably agreeing to support Turkey’s accession to the European Union and expand their counter-terrorism cooperation.
As for Ukraine, there has been a clear divide among the 31 NATO member nations over whether the country should join, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
Before the summit, Germany made it clear that it preferred issuing further security commitments and promising more arms packages to the war-torn country while pushing membership talks to the backburner until after its war with Russia ends.
Others, like Lithuania, have called for Ukraine to be allowed to join the alliance or at least be given a clear path to membership.
While the United States has spent billions of dollars in taxpayer money arming Ukraine, President Joe Biden reiterated in an interview with CNN before leaving for Vilnius that Ukraine was far from ready to join NATO, as reported in The Dallas Express. He cited the ongoing war and concerns over the country’s alleged political corruption.
Some foreign policy officials in the United States have questioned Biden’s hesitance in a recent open letter published by Politico.
“The likelihood of a future Ukraine dragging us into a war is much greater if they’re untethered to any Western alliance,” explained Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman from New Jersey, according to The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t think it’s in our interest to see a Ukraine that is armed to the teeth, highly nationalistic, completely untethered to any western alliance and thus free to do whatever it wants.”
During the summit, the lack of consensus among NATO members over Ukraine’s prospective membership frustrated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
On Twitter, he called the alliance’s refusal to provide a definitive path toward the country’s membership “unprecedented and absurd,” claiming that Ukrainian membership could provide a significant deterrent against Russian aggression.
“And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror … Uncertainty is weakness,” he added.
Responding to the outcries from Kyiv, Stoltenberg defended the decision to forego an invitation until all member countries agree, according to WSJ.
Still, Stoltenberg said that Ukraine was “closer to NATO than ever before” due to the summit, where spending limits on arms to Ukraine were raised and new war plans adopted, according to the BBC.
A new Ukraine-NATO council was also formed. Its first meeting was held on July 12, during which Stoltenberg referred to Zelenskyy “as an equal.”