BERLIN, July 10. /TASS/. Berlin believes that now is not the time to invite Ukraine to join NATO, a German cabinet source told reporters on Monday.
According to the source, "there is no consensus among [the NATO] allies" on Ukraine’s potential accession to the North Atlantic Alliance. "The time has not yet come for [extending] an invitation," he added.
The cabinet source also said that, according to Berlin, Ukraine’s NATO membership "won’t be on the agenda" of the bloc’s upcoming summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. The German government expects that the focus of the meeting will be on ways to step up ties between the alliance and Kiev.
The source pointed out that a NATO-Ukraine Council would be formally established at the summit, and there were plans "to hold meetings in that format four times per year for an exchange of views."
Touching upon Berlin’s priorities for the Vilnius summit, the source noted that, first of all, they included measures aimed at containing potential adversaries and boosting NATO’s defense capabilities. The summit is ostensibly expected to send a signal of unity and readiness to protect the territory of the alliance "at any time." Efforts to grant NATO membership to Sweden are the second priority. "The third priority is NATO’s relationship with Ukraine," the cabinet official clarified. "It’s clear to the German government that Russia must not achieve its goals [in Ukraine] and prevail," the source stated.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said earlier that Ukraine would not be getting an invitation to join the alliance at the Vilnius summit on July 11-12, but will receive a strong signal that the alliance’s doors remain open. He also said that NATO would adopted a multi-year military assistance program for Ukraine, which is supposed to be implemented regardless of how the conflict with Russia unfolds.
NATO adopted a political declaration at the Bucharest summit in April 2008 that Ukraine would eventually become a NATO member, but declined to provide a Membership Action Plan (MAP), the first step in a prospective member country's legal procedure for joining the organization. In February 2019, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) approved amendments to Ukraine's constitution enshrining its NATO aspirations into law. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Kiev seeks to obtain an understanding of a specific date by which Ukraine could expect to join the alliance.