At a summit in Vilnius this week, Nato said that it would allow Ukraine to join when its 31 members agree that it can and when “conditions are met.”
But what that means exactly is not specified in the Nato communique published on Tuesday.
The opacity of the wording has caused confusion among Ukrainian activists, who told The National that they fear Nato is using the need for reforms as an excuse to delay their country's membership bid.
Nato officials have tried to assuage Ukraine’s fears, arguing that wording in support of Ukraine’s accession to the alliance – which was also mentioned at a 2008 summit without yielding concrete results – has never been so strong.
“In 2008, Ukraine was quite far from Nato,” said Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at a press conference on Tuesday. “What has happened since 2008 has already moved them much closer to us.”
Pressed by reporters to detail the conditions for Ukraine’s accession, he said they included addressing “governance, corruption, interoperability” – regardless of the issue that Ukraine is engaged in an active war.
The war precludes it joining the alliance because that would place Nato’s 31 members in a direct conflict with Russia.
“We want good governance, we want modern defence and security institutions, and we want armed forces which are interoperable with Nato,” Mr Stoltenberg said.
But he did not specify how Ukraine should achieve this.
Ukraine wants “specifics”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reflected on the issue in a tweet on Wednesday.
“I would also like to draw your attention to the wording regarding the 'conditions' that we must meet in order to receive an invitation to Nato,” he wrote.
“The absolute majority of our people expect specifics about these conditions.”
The Ukrainian leader made no reference to Mr Stoltenberg’s allusion to governance and corruption, saying instead that he perceived these conditions to be “security conditions.”
Mr Zelenskyy nevertheless extended his gratitude to the alliance for removing a step that has been mandatory for other former Soviet countries before joining the alliance called the Membership Action Plan. It involves additional reforms.
The Group of Seven countries – the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Canada and Italy – issued long-term security guarantees to Ukraine on Wednesday, which Mr Zelenskyy described as the first legally binding “security umbrella” for his country.
Allies hailed the summit as a success. Dutch foreign affairs minister Wopke Hoekstra told The National that “conditions which are in place for all aspiring Nato members are also here in place, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t take a tremendous step forward today.”
Yet these assurances have done little to assuage fears among Ukrainians that their country is engaged in a long-term conflict with Russia with no clear end in sight.
Ukrainian teenagers should not be shipped off to fight Russian soldiers in trenches when they turn 18 years old in a few years from now, warned Daria Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anticorruption Action Centre, a Ukrainian NGO.
Speaking to The National on the margins of the Vilnius summit, she said: “I want this war to end with victory, and clear guarantees in the form of Nato membership that Russia will not attack again.”
She said that the wording in Tuesday’s communique was not very different from the 2008 statement which said that Ukraine, along with Georgia, would “become members of Nato.”
That statement did not stop Russia from invading Crimea in 2014 and launching a full-scale invasion against Ukraine in 2022.
Referring to this week’s Nato communique, Ms Kaleniuk asked: “What does it mean – when conditions are met?”
“Give us a list with what needs to be done, and we will push for its implementation. We are already working on the defence and security sector – in cleaning up shady things,” she said.
She said that while corruption is still a serious issue in Ukraine, she believed that the issue was used as an excuse to delay her country’s accession to the alliance.
“We admit it, yes there is a corruption problem in Ukraine, but tell us what you mean. Send your experts in logistics and in procurement to work with both the government and civil society.”
Corruption, she said, is a “face-saving excuse.”
Mr Stoltenberg has repeatedly said that Russia does not determine the timeline of Nato enlargement, but Ms Kaleniuk remains unconvinced.
“They’re afraid of Russia,” she said, referring to Nato.
US hesitation
The US has publicly been the most cautious Nato member when it comes to greenlighting Ukraine's membership.
Meanwhile, countries in Eastern Europe geographically closest to Russia, and which most fear an armed attack, have been vocally supportive of Ukraine’s request for fast-track accession.
Zachary Selden, associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, said that US leadership did not want to viewed as overlooking corruption issues in Ukraine.
“In a politically partisan environment in the US, the issue could become a big problem in the future,” he said.
“There’s domestic political concerns in the US. This president [Joe Biden] doesn’t want to open voter liability for himself.”
The most probable outcome is that the US and Western countries will continue engaging with Ukraine to bolster its security on the long term.
“As you do that, Ukraine becomes closer and closer to meeting basic standards that Ukraine would expect of a Nato member.”
Unlike the EU, which details reforms needed for countries with candidacy status like Ukraine, Nato enlargements are a more political process with less standardised pathways to membership.
Nato officials recognise that Ukraine has made considerable efforts to tackle corruption even though it is engaged in an active war.
But they say more is needed, though little has been made public about the content of their discussions with their Ukrainian counterparts.
Issues of democratisation and Russian infiltration of Ukrainian services are “serious” said a Nato official, who spoke to journalists under condition of anonymity.
Kyiv has made “quite good and very important” progress, particularly when it comes to transparency in defence procurement, he added.
Yet Ukraine security services have “a huge task” on their hands as Russia continues to try to gather intelligence in unoccupied Ukrainian territories.
“Countering corruption within an intelligence and security service tends to be an issue that needs to be tightly managed and understood,” said the official.
“The extent of civilian oversight is really important to be sure that politically elected people have the final say on what the military does and intelligence and security services do,” he said.
“It's a process to go through.”
