A promise with no date attached
At the 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO told Ukraine and Georgia they “will become members of NATO.” Nobody said when. Nobody said how. More than a decade and a half later, that gap remains the technical reality of Ukraine’s bid.
Ukraine wrote the goal into its constitution in 2019, as “fully-fledged membership.” After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had formally requested “accelerated accession” that September. He also asked allies for concrete security guarantees to cover the years before any membership came through, according to a House of Commons Library briefing.
Vilnius: a shortcut, but no invitation
The 2023 summit in Vilnius was supposed to settle the question. It did not. Zelensky went in hoping for a timeline and left unhappy. Before the communiqué was public he wrote that there was no readiness “neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member,” and he called the missing time frame “unprecedented and absurd.” His warning was short: “Uncertainty is weakness.” Leaving the question open, he argued, hands Moscow leverage in any future negotiation.
What allies did give him was procedural. NATO waived the Membership Action Plan, the usual preparation track, saying Ukraine’s path “has moved beyond the need” for it. It also created the NATO-Ukraine Council for joint consultation and decisions. The G7 offered long-term security guarantees, though outside the NATO framework. Rishi Sunak, then British prime minister, told the Commons that NATO “took a big step in Vilnius” toward bringing Ukraine in.
The shortcut has limits. Neither Finland nor Sweden used a Membership Action Plan for their own applications, so skipping one is not unprecedented. The real obstacle is consensus: every member must agree before an invitation goes out. Territorial disputes also weigh on any candidate, and Ukraine has one that is active.
Why the war is the sticking point
Article 5 explains the caution. Admit Ukraine mid-war and the treaty would bind every ally to its defense. President Joe Biden put it bluntly in a CNN interview cited by TIME: “If the war is going on, then we’re all in war.” Martin Smith of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst argued NATO cannot offer a firm prospect to a country with nearly 20% of its territory under occupation. Trevor McCrisken of the University of Warwick added a second wrinkle: Russia might demand that Ukraine stay out of NATO as a price for ending the fighting.
Washington, 2024
The July 2024 summit in Washington, held on the 9th to 11th, repeated the formula. Ukraine’s path to membership was “irreversible,” its future “is in NATO,” and still no formal invitation. The declaration pointed to remaining work on interoperability and on democratic and security sector reforms.
The practical offer was what NATO called a “bridge”: a new NATO body to coordinate military equipment and training, a pledge of long-term security assistance, and a joint analysis and training centre. Allies intended to supply a “minimum baseline funding of €40 billion within the next year.”
Sources
- NATO enlargement: Ukraine – House of Commons Library
- Zelensky Blasts 'Absurd' Ukraine NATO Membership Delays. Here's What to Know – TIME (Anna Gordon)
