NATO envoy sets conditions for Ukraine to join the organization
(Baonghean.vn) - The conflict between Moscow and Kiev must end before Ukraine can join NATO, Czech Ambassador to the US-led military bloc, Jakub Landovsky, declared.
He added that membership might not require a formal peace treaty between the two neighbors, but Ukraine’s borders must be clear. “Hostiles must cease completely,” the diplomat said, apparently referring to the situation on the front line. “Ultimately, the only party responsible for answering the question of where the border should be is Ukraine,” he added. “No one from the outside can comment on that.”
Ukraine’s political system must also “match” those of NATO members, Landovsky said. The diplomat added that it would ultimately be up to Kiev to decide when the conflict with Russia ends. The 31-member bloc confirmed at a summit in Vilnius in mid-July that Ukraine would be allowed to join at an unspecified date in the future, but only after the conflict with Russia ended. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned NATO for its “indecisive attitude” and highlighted the lack of a clear path to membership. Those statements so angered the US that it briefly considered withdrawing its “invitation” to Kiev to join the bloc altogether, according to the Washington Post.
A recent report by The Guardian, citing an upcoming book by US journalist Franklin Foer, suggests that Zelensky had been pushing the US to accept Ukraine’s NATO membership long before the conflict with Russia broke out. The 2021 meeting between Biden and Zelensky reportedly ended with the Ukrainian leader “angering” the US president with demands, and what Foer described as an “absurd” assessment of Ukraine’s prospects for NATO membership. Moscow has repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s NATO membership is a direct threat to Russia’s national security. Moscow also considered Kiev’s neutrality as one of the conditions for ending the military campaign.
Kiev has rejected Moscow's conditions and demanded that Russian troops withdraw from all territories that Ukraine considers its own, including the Crimean peninsula and four regions that Russia annexed after a referendum in the fall of 2022./.