Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte shake hands at a press conference during the NATO Defence Ministers Council in Brussels, 17 October 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER MATTHYS
Kyiv has said that it would only consider joining NATO as a full member, rejecting any alternative formats under which it might be invited to join the defence alliance, a statement issued by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
In the statement, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Ukraine’s full membership of NATO would be “the only real guarantee of security for Ukraine” that was available and that it would serve as “a deterrent to further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states”.
The ministry referred to the Budapest Memorandum, which was signed by Russia, Ukraine, the UK and the US in December 1994 and provided security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons, as a “monument to short-sightedness in strategic security decision-making”.
While the memorandum represented a “significant step in strengthening global nuclear disarmament”, it ultimately failed to prevent Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the statement continued. “With the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum behind us, we will not accept any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the ministry stressed.
However, NATO is highly unlikely to extend an invitation to Ukraine for full membership at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, Reuters reported, citing the lack of consensus on the issue among NATO’s 32 member states, which a senior NATO diplomat said could “take weeks and months” to reach.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been signalling Kyiv’s readiness to make concessions to end the war over the past month, telling Sky News in an interview on Friday that NATO membership would have to be offered to unoccupied parts of Ukraine in order to end the “hot phase of the war”, as long as the invitation acknowledged Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.
Zelensky appeared to accept that the Russian-occupied eastern regions of Ukraine would fall outside such a deal, Sky News reported. In November Zelensky told Fox News that Ukraine was prepared to pursue the return of Russian-annexed Crimea through diplomatic rather than military channels to avoid the loss of “thousands” of Ukrainian lives.
