Paul Ronzheimer is Deputy Editor-in-Chief of BILD and senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned European allies that it would be “suicidal” not to admit Ukraine to NATO after the end of the war with Russia.
Kuleba’s comments come ahead of a NATO summit in mid-July, where Kiev’s bid for membership is likely to be the most politically sensitive point of discussion. Ukraine wants a defense alliance pledge to its NATO aspirations, but a number of allies say serious discussion of Ukraine in NATO can only take place once Russian forces are no longer on their territory.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on June 22 that the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 should focus on strengthening Ukraine’s military might, rather than launching a process for Kiev’s entry into the transatlantic alliance.
“After the end of the war, it will be suicidal for Europe not to admit Ukraine to NATO, because that would mean that the option of … war remains open,” Kuleba Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company, said in an interview in Kiev on Friday .
“The only way to shut the door on Russian aggression against Europe and the Euro-Atlantic area at large is to admit Ukraine into NATO, because Russia will not dare repeat this experience,” Kuleba said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a vision that Ukraine will join both NATO and the EU once Kiev repels Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO Natalia Galibarenko told POLITICO in late June that Kyiv is seeking “some sort of invitation — or at least a promise…” at the Vilnius summit to “consider the timeline and modalities of our membership.”
In the interview, Kuleba lashed out at Germany and others who oppose such engagement, warning of a similar outcome to the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, when Berlin and Paris rejected Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO membership.
“Do not repeat the mistake Chancellor Merkel made in Bucharest in 2008 when she firmly opposed progress towards Ukraine’s NATO membership,” he said.
“This decision opened the door for Putin to invade Georgia and then continue his destabilizing efforts in the region, eventually illegally annexing Crimea,” Kuleba said. “Because if Ukraine were accepted into NATO by 2014, that wouldn’t be the case [have been] the illegal annexation of Crimea. There would be no war in the Donbas, there would be no large-scale invasion,” he said.
Kuleba dismissed statements by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that it was “impossible” for Ukraine to win against Russia and said he was “tired of countering all these meaningless arguments”.
“It’s all blah blah blah,” Kuleba said.