WASHINGTON, July 7. /TASS/. Members of the North Atlantic Alliance are still negotiating what exactly to offer Ukraine at their Vilnius summit on July 11-12, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing diplomats.
According to the newspaper, officials in the United States and its NATO allies have described evolving proposals for bilateral or multilateral agreements as "mutual defense pacts or security memorandums." Others at NATO question Ukraine’s readiness for membership, with Kiev still having a long way to tackle its "chronic problem with corruption."
Washington has been maneuvering for months "to lower Kiev’s expectations," as it focused the conversation on "security guarantees, rather than a NATO expansion, WaPo said. The Biden administration sought "to shift the debate toward long-term security pact" as an alternative to membership, with no NATO ally apparently being "willing to send its soldiers to fight in Ukraine," the newspaper explained.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on June 7 that there is a process for the admission of any member, including Ukraine, to NATO and that the United States is not going to get ahead of that. The alliance’s chief Jens Stoltenberg has said that Ukraine joining NATO "in the midst of a war" is not on the agenda.