WASHINGTON, June 28. /TASS/. NATO has no plans of officially inviting Ukraine to join its ranks during the upcoming summit in Washington in July, US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said.

"Ukraine will not be receiving an invitation to join the alliance this July, but we are moving them ever closer to the alliance by focusing on questions of interoperability, and modernization, and also on bringing that much-needed coordination that you just mentioned," she said in an online interview to The Washington Post.

She reiterated that NATO will not accept countries engaged in a military conflict as its members.

According to the final statement of the NATO summit on June 14, 2021, Ukraine and Georgia can be admitted to the alliance in future. Russia strongly opposes NATO’s eastward expansion.

Ukraine announced a fast-track NATO membership bid in September 2022, and was assured at a NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023 that it would be accepted into the bloc once it met all the required conditions. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on November 28 that Ukraine would be accepted into the North Atlantic Alliance in due time; however, he did not specify when this might happen. The organization has repeatedly emphasized that Ukraine’s admission will be impossible as long as the country remains in the state of a conflict.

In an interview to the Time magazine, published on June 4, US President Joe Biden de-facto ruled out the possibility of Ukraine’s admission.