Germany is preparing to block Ukraine’s application for membership in NATO – mass media

NATO allies insist that Kyiv’s door is open to joining, but many are deeply divided over how quickly that step should be taken.

Germany is going to insist on delaying Ukraine’s accession to NATO due to fears that this move could lead the Alliance to war with Russia.

About this writes Telegraph

An alliance source told media that Berlin will use NATO’s annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week to urge others to focus on security guarantees rather than Ukraine’s membership proposals.

“Berlin is reticent about the prospect of immediate membership,” a source told The Telegraph. “He needs a process and time to develop safeguards to actually lock in membership.”

According to Article 5 of the NATO Alliance, any member state attacked by an external aggressor has the right to request military intervention from the remaining allies.

Appearing to echo Germany’s concerns, US President Joe Biden said he wanted to avoid a situation where “we are all at war, we are at war with Russia”.

We will remind that Biden added that Ukraine is “not ready” for NATO membership and that it “will take some time”.

His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said: “We are not looking to start World War III. Ukraine will not join NATO after this summit.”

“Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the president of Ukraine, has been gradually building up his campaign for Ukraine to join NATO after Russia’s invasion last year, trying to drive a wedge between his country and Moscow,” the publication writes.

He urged NATO’s 31 member states to take concrete steps toward Ukraine’s membership so that his country could quickly join the transatlantic alliance after the war.

Germany and the United States have privately warned that the move could escalate the current conflict into an active war between NATO and Russia.

Additionally, Putin has often stated that NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders over the past two decades was a key factor in his decision to invade Ukraine.

Since then, the Russian president has threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war, which has raised fears of escalation in Western countries.

The US, UK and EU countries are currently developing a series of bilateral security proposals that they hope will help protect Kyiv in the absence of NATO membership.

But other leaders, such as Estonian Prime Minister Kaia Kallas, say Ukraine should be offered a road map to join at the summit.

It is also known that the USA, Germany and France are working on a number of bilateral proposals to specify their support for Kyiv in legally binding agreements.

Individual national proposals to Kyiv will then be included in a framework agreement, a Memorandum of Understanding, to be approved by NATO and the EU

Media sources said it was the “next best offer” for Kyiv, taking membership and Article 5 protection off the table for now.

We will remind, earlier it was reported that the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin said that the country NATO should reach a consensus on Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance, but some European countries want to wait for the results of the war with Russia.

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