Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha urged North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries to extend an invitation to Kyiv to join the Western military alliance at a meeting in Brussels next week, according to the text of a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. requested.
The letter marks Ukraine’s new effort to secure an invitation to join NATO, part of a “victory plan” outlined last month by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to end the war sparked by Russia’s invasion in 2022. is reflected.
Ukraine has said it accepts that it cannot join the alliance until the war ends, but extending the invitation now would help Russian President Vladimir Putin achieve one of his main goals: preventing Kiev from joining NATO. It will show you what you can’t do.
“This invitation should not be seen as an escalation,” Sibiha wrote in the letter.
“On the contrary, once Russia clearly understands that Ukraine’s membership in NATO is inevitable, it will lose one of its main arguments for continuing this unjust war,” he wrote.
“I urge you to support the decision to invite Ukraine into the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting on December 3-4, 2024.”
NATO diplomats say there is no agreement among alliance members to invite Ukraine at this stage. Such a decision would require the consent of all 32 NATO members.
NATO has declared that Ukraine has joined the alliance and is on an “irreversible” path to membership. However, no formal invitations have been issued and no schedule has been set.
Olga Stefanishina, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister in charge of NATO affairs, said Kiev’s president understood that consensus on an invitation to NATO was “not yet reached” but that the letter sent a strong political signal. He said that was his intention.
“We have sent a message to our allies that despite all the manipulation and speculation, the invitation is off the table,” he told Reuters.
“The continued escalation of the war provoked by Russia, the latest demonstration of which is the participation of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and an invitation to use Ukraine as a testing site, is the right response,” Sibiha said in the letter. did. For new weapons. ”
But in recent days, diplomatic officials have said they do not see a change in attitude among NATO countries, especially as they await the alliance’s dominant U.S. policy on Ukraine under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump. are.
