By John Irish and Tom Balmforth
(Reuters) -Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has urged his NATO counterparts to challenge an invite to Kyiv at a gathering in Brussels subsequent week to hitch the Western army alliance, in accordance with the textual content of a letter seen by Reuters on Friday.
The letter displays Ukraine’s renewed push to safe an invite to hitch NATO, which is a part of a “victory plan” outlined final month by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to finish the struggle triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion.
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Zelenskiy instructed UK-based Sky News that providing Ukraine NATO membership whereas permitting Russia to maintain for the second territory it had captured may very well be an answer to finish the “scorching stage” of the 33-month-old struggle.
Ukraine says it accepts that it can’t be part of the alliance till the struggle is over however extending an invite now would present Russian President Vladimir Putin that he couldn’t obtain considered one of his principal objectives – stopping Kyiv from changing into a NATO member.
“The invitation shouldn’t be seen as an escalation,” Sybiha wrote within the letter.
“On the opposite, with a transparent understanding that Ukraine’s membership in NATO is inevitable, Russia will lose considered one of its principal arguments for persevering with this unjustified struggle,” he wrote.
“I urge you to endorse the choice to ask Ukraine to hitch the Alliance as one of many outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministerial Meeting on 3-4 December 2024.”
Zelenskiy instructed Sky News an invite needed to be formally prolonged to your entire nation as Ukraine had no authorized proper to recognise any of its territory as Russian. NATO membership might then initially apply to solely the a part of Ukraine that Kyiv controls.
“No one has supplied us to be in NATO for one half or one other a part of Ukraine. The reality is, it’s a answer to cease the new stage of the struggle as a result of we are able to simply give NATO membership to the a part of Ukraine that’s beneath our management,” Zelenskiy stated.
“But the invitation should be given to Ukraine inside its internationally recognised borders … That’s what we have to do quick after which Ukraine can get again the opposite a part of its territory diplomatically.”
NO NATO CONSENSUS
NATO diplomats say there is no such thing as a consensus amongst alliance members to ask Ukraine at this stage. Any such resolution would require the consent of all NATO’s 32 member international locations.
NATO has declared that Ukraine will be part of the alliance and that it’s on an “irreversible” path to membership. But it has not issued a proper invitation or set out a timeline.
Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister accountable for NATO affairs, stated Kyiv understood that the consensus for an invite to hitch NATO “isn’t but there” however the letter was meant to ship a powerful political sign.
“We have despatched a message to the allies that invitation isn’t off of the desk, no matter completely different manipulations and speculations round that,” she instructed Reuters.
In his letter, Sybiha argued an invite can be the appropriate response “to Russia’s fixed escalation of the struggle it has unleashed, the most recent demonstration of which is the involvement of tens of 1000’s of North Korean troops and the usage of Ukraine as a testing floor for brand new weapons”.
In current days, nonetheless, diplomats have stated they don’t see any adjustments of stance amongst NATO international locations, notably as they await the Ukraine coverage of the United States – the alliance’s dominant energy – beneath the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
(Reporting by John Irish and Tom Balmforth; writing by Andrew Gray; Editing by Gareth Jones, Tomasz Janowski, Ron Popeski and Rod Nickel)
