NATO has doubled down on its commitment to one day include Ukraine, a promise that some officials and analysts believe helped prompt Russia’s invasion this year.
The world’s largest security alliance has also pledged to send more aid to Ukrainian forces locked in battle with Russian troops.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met NATO foreign ministers in Romania to drum up support for Ukraine as Russia bombs energy infrastructure ahead of the cold winter.
NATO has pledged its commitment to NATO membership. (AP)
Russia cannot stop the alliance’s expansion, NATO leaders said.
“The door to NATO is open,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said before chairing the meeting in the capital, Bucharest.
He noted that North Macedonia and Montenegro had recently joined NATO and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “will get Finland and Sweden into NATO” soon.
The Nordic neighbors applied for membership in April, worried that Russia might attack them next.
“Russia does not have a veto” on countries joining, Stoltenberg said.
“We are also betting on membership in Ukraine.”
When they met in Bucharest in 2008, NATO leaders said Ukraine and Georgia would join the alliance one day.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia would not be able to “veto” its membership. (AP) Some officials and analysts believe that the move, pressed on NATO allies by former US President George W. Bush, was partly responsible for Russia launching war on Ukraine in February.
Stoltenberg said NATO expansion would not be hindered.
“President Putin cannot deny that sovereign nations make their own sovereign decisions that are not a threat to Russia,” the former Norwegian prime minister said.
“I think what he’s afraid of is democracy and freedom, and that’s the main challenge for him.”
Still, Ukraine won’t be joining NATO anytime soon.
With the annexed Crimean peninsula and Russian troops and pro-Moscow separatists holding parts of the south and east, it is unclear what Ukraine’s borders would look like.
Many of the 30 NATO allies believe the focus now needs to be solely on defeating Russia, and Stoltenberg stressed that any attempt to advance membership could divide them.
“We are in the middle of a war and therefore we must not do anything that could undermine the unity of allies to provide military, humanitarian and financial support to Ukraine, because we must prevent President Putin from winning,” he said.
Beyond Ukraine’s immediate needs, NATO wants to see how it can help the country in the long term, upgrading its Soviet-era equipment to modern alliance standards and providing more military training.
Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Rastislav Kacer said allies must help Ukraine make “the transition to full membership very easy and simple” once NATO and Kyiv are ready to in the accession talks.
NATO is sending more aid to Ukraine. (Getty)
In a statement, the ministers pledged to help Ukraine rebuild after the war, saying: “We will continue to strengthen our partnership with Ukraine as it advances its Euro-Atlantic aspirations.”
Ukraine, for its part, requested more supplies of weapons to defend itself quickly.
“Faster, faster and faster,” said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “We appreciate what has been done, but the war continues.”
“Simply put,” he said, “Patriots and transformers is what Ukraine needs most.”
Stoltenberg confirmed that deliveries of such sophisticated missile systems are being considered.
Some ministers promised military support to Ukraine, others for financial and non-lethal aid.
Slovakia said it was providing 30 armored personnel carriers and more artillery.
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The United States announced $53 million ($79.17 million) to buy electrical parts for Ukraine’s damaged power grid.
The network has been battered across the country since early October by targeted Russian attacks, in what US officials call a Russian campaign to weaponize the winter cold.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu went a step further than most, asking his NATO partners to pledge one percent of their GDP to Ukraine in military support, saying he would “a strategic difference”.
Most NATO allies, however, struggle to spend two percent of GDP on their own defense budgets.
The foreign ministers of NATO candidates Finland and Sweden join the talks. NATO is keen to add the two Nordic nations to the defensive forces aligned against Russia.
Turkey and Hungary are the ones who are reluctant to ratify their requests.
The other 28 member nations have already done so.