On the eve of the annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that Ukraine’s membership “will have very, very negative consequences for the whole architecture of European security” and that, considered an “absolute” threat, this decision “will require a clear and firm reaction”.
In the immediate future, such membership should not happen. Because as long as the guns are heard in Ukraine, it would imply an entry into the war of the member states – article 5 of the treaty of the Alliance provides that an attack against one of its members “shall be considered as an attack against all members”. kyiv accepts it: “We will not become a member of NATO as long as this war lasts […] it’s impossible,” acknowledged President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But out of the question to give reason to Moscow for as much. The whole issue of the summit concerns the message to be sent at the end of the Vilnius meeting, to which the Ukrainian leader should indeed go. Zelensky is asking for a “clear signal” regarding his country’s membership. Not sure he gets it…
How far will the door open? On the side of the Baltic countries like Poland, we would already like to give a calendar to the Ukrainians. The French President, Emmanuel Macron, wants to show him a “path”, that is to say, to detail the process by which this will be possible.
On the side of the United States and Germany, they insist on not going too quickly, even if it means dampening hopes of rapid membership, to avoid fueling an escalation with Moscow. “I don’t think she’s ready to be part of NATO,” swept away US President Joe Biden.
Without going through the “membership action plan”
“The positions of Paris and Washington are not that far apart, there is an element of caution and common sense linked to the fact that we do not know how long the conflict will last, explains Amélie Zima, researcher at the ‘Irsem and author of NATO, (“What do I know”, PUF). We will have to look at the paragraph devoted to Ukraine in the final communiqué of the summit. There could very well be a strong sentence that would confirm Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations and also say that Russia has no veto power over entry procedures.”
Whether the communiqué satisfies him on the question of his country’s membership or not, Volodymyr Zelensky should not leave Vilnius empty-handed. On the eve of the summit, it was a question of eliminating the obligatory passage of Ukraine through the “action plan for accession”, a kind of antechamber setting out a certain number of reform objectives to be put in place before a accession – the path taken by Bulgaria, the Baltic States, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia.
“It is this action plan that was refused by France and Germany to Ukraine at the Bucharest summit in 2008, so as not to offend Russia, underlines Amélie Zima. But even without having to go through this mandatory pre-membership programme, Ukraine will not escape the need to respect, beyond compliance with NATO military procedures, a certain number of economic and political criteria, if it wants to join NATO .” Criteria that overlap with the requirements for its entry into the European Union.