NATO will not extend an invitation to Ukraine at its Lithuania summit in July, as the president has said. Volodymyr Zelensky expected. “We will not discuss an invitation at the Vilnius summit,” said Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday after the meeting of defense ministers in Brussels. Instead, a new NATO-Ukraine Council will be created, which will meet for the first time in Vilnius with Selenksi.
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The US and Germany are opposed to an invitation for Ukraine to join. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in Brussels that admitting a country at war “is out of the question”. The 31 countries of NATO can only make the invitation unanimously.