Media outlet discovers why Zelenskyy wrote angry tweet on his way to NATO summit

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attempted to influence the course of discussions at the NATO summit on Tuesday when it became known that the text of the final declaration had been changed to wording less favourable to Ukraine at the insistence of the United States and Germany.

Source: Bloomberg learned this from more than a dozen diplomats and officials who attended the NATO summit, European Pravda reports

Details: According to Bloomberg, the text of the final declaration of the Vilnius NATO summit had not been agreed on Monday night, but it offered clearer paths to membership for Kyiv (Bloomberg did not specify what these were).

However, at the insistence of the US and Germany, the wording was changed to make it less favourable to Ukraine, and that was what went into the final version. When the Ukrainian delegation found out about this on Tuesday, they decided to post a provocative tweet on behalf of Zelenskyy.

In doing this, the Ukrainian delegation was attempting to influence the course of discussions within NATO, but it had the opposite effect. The United States was particularly irritated, as it had not been warned about the tweet, forcing the UK delegation and some of the German delegation to intervene.

"As the situation threatened to come off the rails, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, called US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, but the text was approved anyway before the Ukrainians arrived," Bloomberg writes.

Коли Зеленський прибув на саміт у вівторок увечері, його відверто розкритикували інші лідери. Під час спільної вечері його закликали "охолонути" й оцінити весь пакет рішень щодо України, додає видання.

When Zelenskyy arrived at the summit on Tuesday evening, he was openly criticised by other leaders. During a joint dinner, he was urged to calm down and evaluate the package of decisions on Ukraine as a whole, the media outlet adds.

By Wednesday, Zelenskyy had radically changed his opinion regarding NATO's decision on Ukraine. He later explained that he still considered the wording of the declaration "absurd", but expressed confidence that the Alliance would not make political demands in order for Ukraine to be invited to join NATO.

The Vilnius Summit decision contains quite positive wording regarding Ukraine. In particular, the NATO summit agreed to remove the requirement for a Membership Action Plan on Ukraine's path to the Alliance. At the same time, the Allies made it clear that they would invite Ukraine to join NATO "when the conditions are met".

The summit decision does not contain a list of the conditions to be met by Ukraine, but it does set out a mechanism for their assessment. The tool for monitoring the reforms that Ukraine is implementing will be the Annual National Programme (ANP). Ukraine already has this tool at its disposal.

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