According to US President Joe Biden, Ukraine cannot expect preferential treatment in its efforts to join NATO. The country must meet all the necessary criteria for membership, he said today. “So we’re not going to make it easy.”
For some time now, Ukraine has been urging its western supporters to join the military alliance more closely and at a later date. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky actually expected his country to receive an official invitation to join the military alliance at the military alliance summit in Lithuania in July.
US and Germany step on the brakes
However, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently dismissed such efforts: “We will not discuss an invitation at the Vilnius summit,” he said in Brussels after a meeting of defense ministers. Instead, a new NATO-Ukraine Council will be created, which will meet for the first time in Vilnius with Zelenskyy.
The US and Germany are opposed to an invitation for Ukraine to join. Regardless of a possible membership, the summit in Lithuania on July 11-12 is to discuss more military support in the fight against Russian troops.