“Ukraine will become a member of NATO.” Jens Stoltenberg said so at the Vilnius Summit, and the communique repeated it. What the alliance did not give Kyiv was a date.
The shift worth watching came in a different place: a new body called the NATO-Ukraine Council. The summit text describes it as a joint forum “where Allies and Ukraine sit as equal members.” Its remit covers political dialogue, cooperation and Kyiv’s aspirations for membership. It is also meant to work as a crisis consultation mechanism between the alliance and Ukraine.
One step instead of two
Vilnius changed the route to membership as well. The communique says Ukraine’s path “has moved beyond the need for the Membership Action Plan.” Stoltenberg put it in plainer terms, saying NATO had “agreed to abandon the Membership Action Plan,” which turns a two-step process into a one-step process.
An invitation would still come only “when Allies agree and conditions are met.” That wording angered President Volodymyr Zelensky. He wrote on Twitter that NATO members were giving no clarity on timing, called the situation absurd, and singled out the word “conditions” for criticism. In his view it would be “absurd if there were no specific deadline for inviting Ukraine.”
The council at work
The new format got a quick test. The council held its second meeting on July 26, 2023, and the agenda was the Black Sea. Russia had pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative on July 17, and strikes followed on grain infrastructure in Odesa, Mykolaiv and the Danube port of Reni, the Kyiv Independent reported.
NATO accused Moscow of “deliberate attempts to stop Ukraine’s agricultural exports on which hundreds of millions of people worldwide depend.” Stoltenberg added that “Russia must stop weaponizing hunger and threatening the world’s most vulnerable people with food instability.”
The alliance said it would expand surveillance flights with patrol aircraft and drones, and it deployed two new multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria and Romania. Separately, the EU set up “solidarity lanes” to move Ukrainian grain by land and sea.
That is the practical difference the council was designed to make. Ukraine does not wait for an invitation to be heard. It sits at the table as an equal member of a standing forum, while the argument over a membership date carries on outside it.
Sources
- Vilnius Summit Communiqué
- Here's what NATO leaders agreed: Zelensky's outrage may be understandable
- NATO-Ukraine Council meets for second time, addresses Black Sea security
