NATO Summit Marked by Division Leaves Ukraine's Future Uncertain

Ukraine's potential pathway to NATO membership was the main topic on the agenda at the alliance's annual Summit, held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Vilnius, Lithuania, and sources in attendance told Newsweek there that the outcome came up considerably short of Ukraine's expectations.

After what multiple figures close to the Ukrainian delegation described as intense behind-the-scenes negotiations, the closest Kyiv came to receiving a guarantee of future membership was the inclusion of the word "invitation" in the summit's official communique, which included the sentence: "[NATO] will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met."

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, now the senior director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, told Newsweek in Vilnius that the debate over the communique's language was a sign of growing divisions within NATO when it comes to the question of Ukraine's future accession into the alliance.

"The drama here was not just the tension between Kyiv and Washington, it was the tension between the White House and eight other NATO capitals," Herbst told Newsweek.

"My understanding is that Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Czechia, Bulgaria, and Romania were all more or less united in pushing for a communique that was more supportive of Ukraine," he added, "and that their bolder NATO position towards prospective Ukrainian membership also had some support from the U.K., France, and possibly even Denmark and Finland."

Herbst saw reason to believe that additional allies would begin embracing a more supportive stance towards Ukraine in the near future.

"I don't have any doubt that, however inadequate the communique is, it's less inadequate than it would have been without the staunch opposition of those NATO partners, and that the bolder grouping is only going to expand in the run-up to next year's summit in Washington," he said.

None of the Ukrainian figures who spoke with Newsweek in Vilnius said that they arrived at the summit expecting their country to be granted full membership immediately. However,15 years after the North Atlantic alliance's 2008 Bucharest summit communique, which promised that both Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia "will become members of NATO," the specifics as to how and when either country's long-anticipated invitation will finally be given remain as uncertain as ever.

"Ukrainians are frustrated," Olena Halushka, co-founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, told Newsweek in Vilnius. "The wording in the communique is vague, meaning that instead of bringing more clarity regarding Ukraine's roadmap to membership, it only added more ambiguity."

The lack of clarity is complicating the work of Ukrainian pro-reform activists, who were hoping to see a clear set of changes to implement in pursuit of accession into the alliance.

"There are problems in the Ukrainian defense and security sectors that need to be fixed," Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Action Center, told Newsweek. "But it would have been much more useful if NATO could have provided a concrete list of targets that need to be met, just like the European Union did last year when offering Ukraine candidate status."

Instead of devoting time to clarifying a list of concrete benchmarks for Ukrainian membership, however, much of the diplomatic wrangling behind the scenes of the summit centered on a debate around the place of the word "invitation" in the conference's final communique. Multiple sources told Newsweek that the preliminary draft communique drawn up in advance of Tuesday's opening ceremonies had excluded the word.

"On Monday, the word 'invitation' was not included in the draft communique," Ukrainian member of parliament Oleksiy Honcharenko told Newsweek. "But thankfully our delegation, along with our eastern European allies, sprung into action and managed to get it inserted into the text over the objections of the U.S. and Germany."

Honcharenko said that a tweet published by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday warning that "uncertainty is weakness" was not part of the push to have "invitation" inserted into the text.

According to Honcharenko, Zelensky's tweet was published after the change had already been made, and as a result of the public messaging on social media, "the U.S. position hardened, and they refused to make any further changes."

Newsweek reached out to President Zelensky's press office for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

With the exception of Zelensky's Tuesday tweet, the tensions within the alliance remained mostly hidden behind the scenes throughout the meeting in Vilnius. However, during a question and answer session with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Wednesday, the final day of the summit, some signs of discord became visible to the wider public.

After being given the floor, Ukrainian anti-corruption activist Daria Kaleniuk asked about the specific steps her country would need to take in order to fulfill NATO's demands for membership.

"We would like to know what these conditions which must be met mean," she said. "We would like to find out what kind of homework we have to do in Ukraine."

Kaleniuk then continued with a personal story, explaining that in 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, her son was 2 years old. "He is now sleeping in the corridor because of air raids," she said.

"What should I tell my son?" Kaleniuk questioned rhetorically. "That President Biden and NATO did not invite Ukraine to NATO because he is afraid of Russia? Afraid of Russia losing? Afraid of Ukraine winning? Or there are backchannel communications with the Kremlin to reach a Minsk-III deal?"

Kaleniuk was referencing the Minsk Protocol of September 2014 and the Minsk-II agreement of February 2015, which were signed by Ukraine along with representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "People's Republics." They were an attempt to quell the fighting that had broken out in eastern Ukraine as a result of a hybrid Russian invasion that began with the occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea in March 2014.

Despite the Kremlin's direct role in the eight-year-long war that followed, the Minsk agreements did not officially recognize Russia as a party to the conflict.

"Should I prepare my son to fight Russians when he will be 18 years [old] in seven years?" Kaleniuk asked.

On stage, Sullivan's response was measured. He noted that the entire world was "in awe of the bravery and courage of every Ukrainian citizen who is standing up in the face of Russia's brutal war." He went on to say that "the United States of America has stepped up to provide an enormous amount of capacity," and he argued that "some of what you said in your remarks about motives, I think, was entirely unfounded and unjustified."

Former Ambassador Herbst, however, did not consider Kaleniuk's question to be either unfounded or unjustified.

"The principal reason why the Biden administration was nervous about giving Ukraine a clear path to NATO membership is because they are afraid of the potential reaction from Moscow," Herbst said, "but to acknowledge that would make them more vulnerable to criticism."

"Daria Kaleniuk touched a raw nerve," he added.

An exchange witnessed by Newsweek that occurred approximately three hours after the on-stage confrontation appeared to back up Herbst's assessment. Between sessions, as Ukrainian member of parliament Honcharenko was giving interviews to journalists, Sullivan and his staff passed by on their way to the television tents. When Honcharenko broke away to address the American official, Sullivan responded with an extended explanation about the question of "that woman," by which he appeared to mean Kaleniuk, having been "inappropriate."

"As soon as I said I was from Ukraine, he brought up the topic [of Kaleniuk's question]," Honcharenko said of the encounter. "That's the first time I've ever seen him in person, and three hours after the event, he was visibly still agitated by it."

Still, the summit did succeed in advancing several of Ukraine's stated interests, even if the country's representatives were left hoping for stronger commitments from the NATO alliance as a whole.

"I expect that soon we will have signed documents saying that the kind of support America and our other partners are already providing for Ukraine will continue to be provided," Honcharenko said of the summit's results.

"Of course we would have liked to receive an Article V guarantee," he added. "But we can reserve that topic for next year's NATO Summit in Washington, D.C."