Slava Ukraine

Photo: NATO.

"Rasmussen said the cause of Ukraine’s Nato membership cannot be deferred again next year. The time has come to take the next step and extend an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato. We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of Nato", said a former Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen. 

He has put forward a proposal for Ukraine to join the military alliance but stripped of the territories occupied by Russia.

Rasmussen has long worked alongside Andriy Yermak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, particularly ahead of the last Nato summit in Vilnius this year that ended with no invitation for Ukraine to join.

According to Guardian the two men are again broadly discussing Ukraine’s place in a new European security architecture, including practical questions around the extent of Ukraine’s Nato membership.

Rasmussen, who was Nato’s secretary general between 2009 and 2014, insisted that a plan for partial Ukraine membership would not symbolise a freezing of the conflict, but would instead mark a determination to warn Russia that it cannot prevent Ukraine joining the western defensive alliance.

Nato is due to hold its 75th anniversary summit in Washington next summer, and the issue of Ukraine’s future membership is bound to be a major topic.

Ukraine’s leadership was left bitterly disappointed (according to Guardian) when, under US and German pressure, Nato at its summit this year issued a statement saying Ukraine would be offered an invitation when conditions allowed, effectively rejecting Ukraine’s request to be given a specific date.

Instead, Ukraine’s relationship with Nato was elevated on the margins by setting up a Ukraine-Nato council and through an agreement that Nato members bilaterally would offer security guarantees to Ukraine.