On August 15, 2024, Ukrainian soldiers prepared M777 artillery in the direction of Malinka, Ukraine.
Diego Herrera Cacedo | Diego Herrera Cacedo Anadolu | Getty Images
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andry Sibiha urged Nato leaders to extend an invitation to Kyiv to join the Western military alliance at a meeting in Brussels next week, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Friday.
The letter reflects Ukraine’s renewed efforts to gain an invitation to join NATO as part of the “Plan for Victory” outlined by President Volodymyr Zelensky last month to end the war triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion. war.
Zelensky told Britain’s Sky News that offering Ukraine NATO membership while allowing Russia to temporarily retain the territory it occupies could be a solution to ending the “intense phase” of the 33-month-old war.
Ukraine says it recognizes it cannot join the alliance until the war is over, but extending an invitation now would signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he is unable to achieve one of his main goals – preventing Kyiv from becoming a NATO member.
“The invitation should not be viewed as an escalation,” Sibiha wrote in the letter.
“On the contrary, if it becomes clear that Ukraine’s membership of NATO is inevitable, Russia will lose one of its main arguments for continuing this unjust war,” he wrote.
“I urge you to support the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on December 3-4, 2024.”
Zelensky told Sky News that the invitation must be formally extended to the entire country because Ukraine has no legal right to recognize any of its territory as Russian territory. NATO membership may initially apply only to parts of Ukraine controlled by Kiev.
“No one wants us to join NATO, let one part of Ukraine join or the other part. The fact is that this is the solution that prevents the war from reaching a fever pitch, because we can let parts of Ukraine join NATO. “We have control. ,” Zelensky said.
“But the invitation must be sent to Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders… That’s what we need to do quickly before Ukraine can reclaim the rest of its territory through diplomatic means.”
No NATO agreement
NATO diplomats said that at this stage, alliance members have not yet reached a consensus on inviting Ukraine. Any such decision would require the consent of all 32 NATO members.
NATO has announced that Ukraine will join the alliance and that it is on the path to “irreversible” accession. But it has yet to issue a formal invitation or set a timetable.
Olga Stefanishina, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for NATO affairs, said Kyiv understood that consensus on an invitation to join NATO “has not yet been reached” but the letter was intended to send a strong political signal.
“We have sent a message to our allies that regardless of different manipulations and speculations, the invitation will not be excluded,” she told Reuters.
Sibiha said in the letter that the invitation would be “the right response to Russia’s escalating war, the latest example of which is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground” to acquire new weapons.
In recent days, however, diplomats have said they have not seen any changes in the positions of NATO countries, particularly as they await the Ukraine policy of the United States, the alliance’s dominant force, under President-elect Donald Trump. hour.
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