Ukraine does not meet many of the criteria for joining NATO. This statement was made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in an interview with Welt on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
“Of course, among the criteria that NATO formulates for itself, there are many conditions that Ukraine is not able to meet at the moment,” he said (quoted by T).
Scholz recalled that the decision on the prospect of Ukraine’s membership in NATO was made in Bucharest. According to him, it was immediately clear that “this will not happen in the foreseeable future.” Now the countries of the alliance need to focus on further support for Kyiv, the German Chancellor added.
During the Bucharest summit in 2008, NATO countries agreed that Ukraine would “become a member of NATO.” In 2019, the Verkhovna Rada approved amendments to the country’s Constitution that strengthen the desire to join NATO.
Against the backdrop of joining Russia in the fall of 2022, the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine would apply for NATO membership in an expedited manner. In November, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted that Kyiv should focus on maintaining its independence, and not on NATO membership.
In April of this year, he announced that NATO members had reached a consensus that Ukraine should become a member of the alliance. In response, the head of the EU foreign policy service, Josep Borrell, said that the decision on Ukraine’s entry into NATO would be made by the member countries of the alliance, and not by Stoltenberg.
In Kyiv, it was noted earlier that they expected to receive a political invitation to NATO at the alliance’s summit in Vilnius on July 11-12. However, on May 15, The Washington Post, citing sources, reported that members of the alliance had decided not to do so at the Vilnius summit.
The Kremlin said that Stoltenberg’s words only confirm the correctness of the decision to conduct a special operation. Prior to this, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov noted that the exclusion of the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO is still one of the goals of the special operation of the Russian Federation.