NATO is the hot-and-cold lover Ukraine needs to stop chasing

Unsurprisingly this request wasn’t received with the same conviction it was delivered. A day after the plan was presented to the Ukrainian Parliament, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, said from the organisation’s headquarters in Brussels that Ukraine will become a member “in the future”. Declining to give more information on when this would happen, Rutte added: “The question is now about the timeline.”

That’s as frustrating a response as you could imagine to such a pressing issue for the Ukrainians. But what was President Zelenskyy expecting? This latest proposal for full NATO membership is just one of several failed attempts to get into bed with the alliance since the war began.

Zelenskyy first sought fast-track acceptance to NATO after Putin’s illegal land grab seven months into the war. Despite Ukraine suffering large territory losses and the continued bloodshed, the alliance is still umming and ahing about a serious relationship.

What’s more confusing for Ukraine was the bold statement made by former secretary general Jens Stoltenberg at the latest NATO summit. Speaking from Washington, he said: “Ukraine is on an irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.” This surely has Zelenskyy clinging to false hope while blinding him from seeing the real picture.

It’s in the alliance’s interests to halt Russian aggression towards the west’s allies, but it’s not in its interests to poke the bear too much, especially while Russia is currently trying to annihilate Ukraine. In fact, this has been the attitude since Ukraine became a sovereign state in 1991 and Zelenskyy isn’t the first president to be led on by NATO’s hot-and-cold antics.

Ukraine began courting the west as soon as it became an independent country. Its first president, Leonid Kravchuk, made it painfully clear throughout his tenure that full NATO membership was the ultimate security aim. Kravchuk joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) in 1991 and in 1994 signed NATO’s Partnership for Peace Programme. He even stated that “the best guarantee to Ukraine's security would be membership to NATO.”

Ukraine’s third, acting fourth and fifth presidents were also pro NATO. In a 2009 statement, President Viktor Yushchenko (2005-2010), made clear his intentions to join the NATO Membership Action Programme. In 2015, in response to Russian-backed separatist aggression in the Donbas region of Ukraine, former acting president Oleksandr Turchynov (2014), said that NATO membership was the “only reliable external guarantee of Ukraine’s safety”. Turchynov made this statement as the head of the national security council under President Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019).

Granted, Ukraine’s second and longest serving president, Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005), and fourth president, Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014), muddied the waters.

Kuchma began his decade in power trying to appease the west and Russia by signing the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. However, he later cuddled up to NATO in 1997 by joining the NATO-Ukraine Commission. Throughout the rest of his presidency, Kuchma played a dangerous hot-and-cold foreign policy game with NATO and the alliance didn’t like the taste of its own medicine. Yanukovych, on the other hand, abandoned NATO ambitions early into his stint and strengthened ties with Moscow.

Aside from the Kuchma and Yanukovych blips, Ukraine has proven itself NATO’s devoted lover time and time again. Yet the alliance keeps adding interim stages to the affair putting off a committed relationship. And like any player stringing a lover along, there’s a reason why NATO won’t fully reciprocate feelings. Zelenskyy knows this, but NATO is too coy to admit it publicly.

That reason is Article Five, the collective defence protocol stating an attack on any NATO member is considered an attack on all members. In theory, triggering Article 5 should provoke a significant response from all NATO countries. This is the love and warmth that Zelenskyy desperately seeks, but that the alliance will continue to deprive him of until the fighting in Ukraine comes to an end without intervention.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, even if NATO took a U-turn on its stance towards the war, there’s nothing in Article 5 binding member states to provide military assistance. A member is only committed to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” This ambiguous wording of Article 5 was the intentional work of the US, who at the time of its writing, was wary of the military commitments a more precisely-worded protocol could tie it into.

NATO is willing to act on Article 5, as we saw in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, just apparently not against a military power that poses a genuine threat. Zelenskyy is hopelessly praying that NATO will discard the potential of nuclear war with Russia by taking Ukraine in and invoking Article 5. It simply won’t happen.

Potential military alliances aside, what have NATO’s most powerful states actually said about sending troops to Ukraine? US joint chiefs of staff won’t even send military trainers until fighting ceases. UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has said: "We're absolutely united in our resolve, and we'll back Ukraine for as long as it takes," but no word of sending troops. And German chancellor, Olaf Schulz, recently reaffirmed his stance against NATO putting boots on the ground.

France is the only major power to have hinted at sending troops to Ukraine. Although that talk has since been quashed and former president Macron shoved back in line with the collective NATO narrative. For Ukraine’s sake, it would’ve been better if Macron had kept his thoughts to himself.

Zelenskyy’s only hope for some form of NATO response is the recent arrival of North Korean troops in Russia, suspected of being prepared for war in Ukraine. If a third party does enter the conflict, it should pose serious questions for NATO. However, US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has already chimed in on the reports, saying: “If their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue.” Strong words, yet hardly a promise to intervene on Ukraine’s behalf.

But Zelenskyy can’t completely cut off his one-sided relationship with NATO, even if the sad reality is that the alliance isn’t coming to the rescue. However, instead of chasing NATO membership, Ukraine’s leadership needs to double down on what it’s already been doing: securing as much foreign military aid as possible. In this sense, NATO members have been loving, with countries such as the UK pledging £3 billion a year until at least 2031.

As Putin also turns to foreign support to continue his hellbent rage in the Ukraine, it’s foreign aid deals, not fantasy NATO membership, that will keep Zelenskyy and his troops in the fight for their homeland.