Ukraine puts pressure on to be invited to join NATO
Less than two months before the return of Donald Trump, Ukraine is putting pressure on NATO countries to be invited to join them, but the foreign ministers of the Alliance, who meet Tuesday in Brussels, should temporize. “The invitation to Ukraine to join NATO is necessary for our survival,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted this weekend. “But we have no illusions, there are still skeptical countries,” he admitted.
His Minister of Foreign Affairs Andriï Sybiga, however, intends to reiterate this message on Tuesday evening, during a working dinner with his 32 NATO colleagues in Brussels. Ukraine wants to approach a possible peace negotiation with Russia from a position of strength and with sufficient security guarantees. And for her, an invitation to join NATO is by far the best guarantee against Russia.
Several Alliance countries, led by the United States, are however reluctant to make this “monumental decision”, as a diplomat in Brussels described it. U.S. officials privately acknowledge that such an invitation is unlikely to be issued just weeks before the start of the new Trump presidency. “Such a gesture before the arrival of the new administration would infuriate Trump and he would immediately take the opposite view,” recognizes a European NATO diplomat.
