NATO summit should offer Ukraine commitments regarding membership – ambassador

Natalia Halibarenko, the Ambassador of Ukraine to the North Atlantic Alliance, believes that the Vilnius NATO summit should offer a certain commitment or guarantee of future membership for Kyiv. 

Source: She said this in an interview with Politico, as European Pravda writes. 

Details: According to Halibarenko, Ukraine at the Alliance summit wants to "receive some kind of invitation or at least an obligation... to consider the time frame and modalities of our membership" in NATO. 

The ambassador admitted that for many NATO member states, any such commitment "is a red line ... because they believe it creates a burden for them." "I can understand that view – I can't support it," she added. 

The diplomat stressed that Ukraine understands the impossibility of joining NATO during the war and therefore it does not raise the issue of membership, but the Vilnius summit of the Alliance could fix the obligation to grant membership, for example, after the end of the war with Russia. 

Halibarenko noted that the absence of an invitation to join the Alliance at the summit would be a "bad signal." 

"[But] if there is no invitation in Vilnius, it's not the end of the world. Not today, but maybe tomorrow, next year in Washington, who knows?", she added. 

As it is known, at the July NATO summit in Vilnius, Ukraine also seeks to achieve clear wording regarding the prospect of membership in the North Atlantic Alliance, instead of criticising the decision of the Bucharest summit, which is "as far removed from reality as possible." 

In addition, Ukraine expects the summit to provide security guarantees for the period before membership in the Alliance, making it so that these guarantees do not substitute the NATO entry per se.

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