NATO didn’t ‘create incentive’ for Putin to stop Ukraine war
Al JazeeraAs the NATO summit in Lithuania wraps up, analysts say its declaration has fallen short and dashed Kyiv’s hopes. “We reaffirm the commitment we made at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and today we recognise that Ukraine’s path to full Euro-Atlantic integration has moved beyond the need for the Membership Action Plan.” According to Bruno Lete, security and defence expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels, while the declaration expresses strong and continued support for Ukraine, “NATO remains vague about the issue.” “NATO is clearly deepening its relations with Kyiv, but regarding membership, the Vilnius Declaration gives little more reason for enthusiasm than the 2008 Bucharest Declaration did,” he told Al Jazeera. Before he arrived at the summit on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said NATO’s stance on Kyiv’s membership was “absurd” in a rare public show of anger towards the alliance. Zelenskyy hailed the new defence packages and said “The Ukrainian delegation is bringing home a security victory for Ukraine.” He also welcomed the opening of the NATO-Ukraine Council and said it would give Ukraine the “necessary institutional certainty” on Kyiv’s NATO membership pathway. After NATO and the G7 announced new defence packages for Ukraine, the Kremlin also warned that more security guarantees to Ukraine would be “dangerous” and infringe on Russia’s security.