LONDON, April 6. /TASS/. Hungary, Germany and the United States oppose the proposal of Poland and Baltic countries to draft a roadmap for Ukraine’s soonest accession to NATO, the Financial Times newspaper wrote on its website on Thursday.
According to the newspaper, all 31 members of the alliance agree that Ukraine’s accession to NATO is not a short-term issue, and serious discussions may begin only after the current conflict on the country’s territory is over. At the same time, a number of eastern European nations suggest strengthening ties between NATO and Ukraine. In their opinion, the alliance should come up with more specific statements in support of Kiev’s future NATO membership and propose a political path towards membership. Their stance will complicate the dialogue between all NATO members in the run-up to the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, where they are expected to issue a joint statement. "The road [to Vilnius] is still very rocky," the newspaper quoted a Western official as saying.
"We’ve got several weeks of hard negotiations ahead to close those gaps and craft a political outcome," another unnamed official said, adding that substantial differences on the issue still existed among the alliance’s members.
The report says that Washington suggests its allies to focus on military, financial and humanitarian aid to the Kiev government, and to discuss practical matters in Vilnius without getting distracted by the issue of future relations between Ukraine and the alliance.
However, as a conciliatory gesture, the Ukraine-NATO council may be created, allowing the Kiev government to receive more detailed intelligence information and participate more actively in NATO meetings. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in March that his participation in the July summit will make sense only if the alliance is prepared to advance concrete cooperation with Kiev.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference in Brussels that NATO’s open-door policy with regard to Ukraine remained unchanged, and the West was focused on practical measures necessary to bring Ukraine into conformity with standards of the alliance. On the same day, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told Politico that Ukraine’s accession to NATO was not a priority task at the moment.
The NATO summit will be held in Vilnius in July. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a fast-track NATO membership bid in late September. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that it was impossible to accelerate the process since the decision on Kiev’s membership should be made by a consensus of all 30 NATO allies. The European Union’s Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said in October that Kiev could not join NATO as long as the military conflict continues on its territory.
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Moscow was closely monitoring the situation around Kiev’s attempt to join NATO and reiterated that Ukraine’s aspiration to join the alliance was one of the reasons for the special military operation.