Ukraine urges NATO to extend membership invitation
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Andrii Sibih, sent a letter to his NATO counterparts, urging them to invite Kyiv to join the Western military alliance during the meeting scheduled for next week in Brussels, as reported byReuters.
Ukraine acknowledges that it cannot join NATO until the war concludes, but extending an invitation at this time would demonstrate to Russian President Vladimir Putin that one of his primary objectives—preventing Kyiv from joining NATO—has failed.
NATO has stated that Ukraine will join the alliance and is on an “irreversible” path to membership, but it has yet to issue an official invitation or establish a timeline.
NATO diplomats indicate that there is no consensus among alliance members to invite Ukraine at this stage. Any such decision would require the unanimous agreement of all 32 NATO member countries.
However, Sibih argues in his letter, which he wrote in English, that now is the right time to issue an invitation. “We believe the invitation should be extended at this stage,” he wrote.
“This would be the appropriate response from the allies to the ongoing escalation of the war initiated by Russia, whose latest show of force is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground for new weaponry,” Sibih added.
“I urge you to endorse the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the conclusions of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting on December 3-4, 2024,” he wrote.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
