NATO chief avoids talk of Ukraine’s membership in military alliance

Brussels: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Tuesday sidestepped questions about Ukraine’s possible membership in the military alliance, saying that the priority now must be to strengthen the country’s hand in any future peace talks with Russia by sending it more weapons.

Rutte’s remarks, ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that extending alliance membership to territory now under Kyiv’s control could end “the hot stage” of the almost 3-year war in Ukraine, where Russian forces are pressing deeper into their western neighbour.

“The front is not moving eastwards. It is slowly moving westwards,” Rutte said. “So we have to make sure that Ukraine gets into a position of strength, and then it should be for the Ukrainian government to decide on the next steps, in terms of opening peace talks and how to conduct them.”

At their summit in Washington in July, leaders of the 32 NATO member countries insisted that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to membership. But some, led by the United States, have balked at moving forward while the war rages and before the country’s borders are clearly demarcated. All 32 countries must agree unanimously for Ukraine to join.

NATO was founded on the principle that an attack on any ally should be considered an attack on them all, and the alliance has consistently tried to avoid being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia.

Zelenskyy argued that once open conflict ends, any proposal to join NATO could be extended to all parts of the country that fall under internationally recognised borders.

Pressed on this by reporters, Rutte said: “I would argue, let’s not have all these discussions step by

step on what a peace process might look like.”

The first step, he said, must be to “make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to get to a position of strength when those peace talks start.”

Ukrainian officials made it clear Tuesday they won’t countenance any half measures or stopgap solutions on NATO membership.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded statement saying Ukraine “will not settle for any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” citing its “bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum.”

Under the international agreement signed in the Hungarian capital 30 years ago, Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era atomic weapons, which amounted to the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, in return for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Foreign Ministry statement called the Budapest agreement a “monument to short-sightedness in making strategic security

decisions.”