“What does the I’LL TAKE it’s absurd” and “disrespectful to Ukraine”. Volodymyr Zelensky warm up the most important summit for the future of your nation. The Ukrainian president knows that the allies are his best asset to face the invader, that they are the ones that have kept his country afloat economically and militarily, that they are on his side and have been spending like never before for a year and a half, emptying their own arsenals to hand them over almost without conditions. But he also knows that the meeting that the 31 and Sweden celebrate this week in Lithuania is the best opportunity for his country in a generation, perhaps the only one or the last, and that is why he is willing to pull the rope to the maximum, to step on calluses and anger your best friends if necessary.
In 2008, in Bucharest, the largest military alliance on the planet opened the doors to Croatia and Albania, but not to his country or to Georgia, and in the following years in the Russian army he penetrated its borders without any mercy. So now Zelensky, Ukraine, needs a much stronger commitment than the open promise he received then that one day he will be part of the Alliance. Ministers and heads of state are currently negotiating the final language of what should be a stronger invitation, and that is why he is driving the wedge before it is too late.
“We value our allies. We value our shared security and always appreciate an open conversation. Ukraine will be represented at the NATO summit, but we also deserve respect. Now, on our way to Vilnius, we receive signals that some wording of a text without our participation I would like to emphasize that this wording refers to the invitation to become a member of NATO, not to membership, but it is absurd and unprecedented when no deadline is set for either the invitation or the membership of Ukraine”, President Zelensky lamented in a message on his Telegram channel and also posted on his social networks.
The 31 have spent weeks trying to polish the language of that final document. They have also created a NATO-Ukraine Council, the second in the organization’s history after the one created for Russia, paralyzed since the 2022 invasion, to talk face to face, on equal terms, with the applicant. But the texts of their Summits are only a matter for the members, and it is not easy to find the exact point. Must be more ambitious than that of RomaniaThey also do not want to raise unrealistic expectations or cause an overreaction in Moscow. Hence, they do not want to include any express mention in a calendar. Not for formal entry, but even for a formal invitation, the same one that Sweden or Finland received in June of last year, barely a month after officially requesting entry.
The text that is being handled, according to diplomatic sources, comes to say that the alliance will leave written that the invitation will arrive when they consider that the conditions for it are met, a prodigy of vagueness. Right now there is a very clear majority that believes that it cannot be done, despite the fact that the streets of Vilnius are a reminder, a pressure cooker, in the opposite direction. On every corner, on every bus, on every billboard, the delegations can read that, while a citizen calmly waits for public transportation, Ukraine is waiting for the necessary planes to resistir. The Baltics or Poland lobby is strong but it seems quite clear that the door cannot be opened while the country is in open war. What are the conditions? No one knows, but to all observers it seems more or less obvious what the impediments are, and they accurately reflect the situation at the front today.