On Tuesday, NATO made public the decision agreed between the Member States. “The Alliance will help Ukraine carry out reforms on its way to future accession. We will be able to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.” The formal invitation is necessary to start the NATO membership process.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General, spoke in more detail: “The invitation will be sent when the conditions are met. It should include the modernisation of organisations, governance, corruption and the strengthening of the armed forces. We are working on this, modernising the institutions and agreeing on interoperability between armies. But in Ukraine there is also a war, when there is a war, it is not the time to become a member of the Alliance. In the end, the allies have to agree, so we make the decisions in NATO.” In short, the invitation has no deadline, the war should be over and then all the Member States will have to protect Ukraine’s entry into NATO.

Some media outlets have reported that at the last moment the word “invitation” has been included in the text as a means of communication between the positions of the countries that advocate the rapid incorporation of Ukraine into NATO, mainly the Baltic States, and those that prefer to wait, including the USA and Germany. Ukraine’s entry into NATO would be a direct war between Russia and NATO and would increase the risk of nuclear war.

Angry Celenski

The President of Ukraine has strongly criticised the NATO decision: “It is surprising and absurd that there is no timetable to invite and retain Ukraine, and to add curious terms about “conditions”, even to invite Ukraine… There seems to be no willingness to invite or socialize Ukraine to NATO.”