At the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, Germany and France came out against the launch of Ukraine’s process of joining NATO, which was then supported by the United States. Since then, this veto has remained in the throat of the Ukrainians: their president Volodymyr Zelensky, after the discovery of the first war crimes committed by the Russians, in March 2022, had publicly invited the leaders of the time, “Mrs Merkel and M . Sarkozy, to visit Boutcha and see what the policy of concessions towards Russia has led to”.
Nearly a year and a half after the Russian invasion, there is no longer any question for Paris of accommodating Vladimir Poutine. Nor even to avoid “humiliating” him, as Emmanuel Macron repeated in the first months of the war. The French president is now calling for NATO to open its door to Ukraine. “We need a path, at least, towards this membership,” he said at the end of May, in Slovakia, during the Globsec summit. The principle of this membership would have since been mentioned during a Defense Council on June 12, at the Elysée, according to The world.
“The lines are moving, with a very strong influence from Eastern and Nordic European countries”, confirms a good connoisseur of NATO mysteries. Poland and the Baltic countries steadfastly defend Ukraine’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance. They had repeatedly criticized France for having shown a form of complacency vis-à-vis the Russian authorities. It is therefore not insignificant that it is approaching their position, while Putin does not seem to want to give up his invasion. Will Berlin and Washington do the same? The two capitals have so far shown themselves cautious about the hypothesis of a Ukrainian entry into NATO.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (l) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference on April 20, 2023 in kyiv
© / afp.com/Handout
The thorny question of the “after”
While the Ukrainian counter-offensive is taking its course, “the aftermath” has occupied Western chancelleries as never since the start of the invasion. Alongside the question of joining the Atlantic Alliance, there are exchanges on the security guarantees to be found to stabilize the situation in Eastern Europe on a lasting basis, which could be announced at the next NATO summit. , in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 11-12. Several are being studied and could relate to the sustainability of intelligence sharing, military training, arms supplies and financial aid.
A guarantee that would aim to dissuade Russia from carrying out a new attack in the future is arousing lively debate: the stationing of Western soldiers, as was done after the Korean War, on the South side, on the part of the Americans. “I think the Poles would seriously consider putting together a coalition of the willing if Ukraine didn’t get anything in Vilnius,” has already warned the former Secretary General of NATO, the Dane Anders Fogh Rasmussen, commissioned by President Zelensky of a working group on security guarantees for Ukraine. For Warsaw and others, we must avoid being too shy. Like in 2008.