‘We don’t know’ what NATO wants from Kyiv to invite it, Ukraine’s FM says

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said that there is currently no clarity on the terms of Ukraine’s future membership in NATO, nor who should spell them out, he told Radio Svoboda in an interview.

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When asked what conditions NATO has given Ukraine for membership, Mr Kuleba said, "We don't know. That's the problem."

"That is, when will the conditions be fulfilled? What are the conditions? Who should formulate them? What are they?

"Once again, our position is that there are all the conditions to invite Ukraine to become a NATO member. That is, we have fundamentally different positions here. Their position is that there are some conditions that need to be met," he said.

Mr Kuleba revealed that the United States and Germany are the most conservative about Ukraine’s future membership in NATO, although it was Washington that played a decisive role in ensuring that "the word 'invitation' appeared in the text of the communiqué at all".

"[It is] not in the wording that satisfies us, but in principle. And Germany, after all, did not resist this either. So the world is a little more complicated than just black and white," he concluded.

At a meeting Tuesday, the North Atlantic Alliance’s leaders agreed to remove a membership action plan stage for Ukraine on its way to NATO membership, but did not extend an invitation to join, something that Kyiv has been hoping for.

Ukraine has repeatedly said that it wants to receive a political invitation to the Alliance at the NATO summit in Vilnius, although it appreciates that membership is out of the question until the end of the war.