After 5.5 years of the Hungarian blockade, Ukraine has finally resumed full-fledged dialogue with NATO at the political level. This is the main official outcome of the Ukraine-NATO ministerial meeting, which brought together in Brussels foreign ministers of all the NATO member states and their Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.

This meeting has opened the way for Ukraine to be invited to the NATO summit in Vilnius.

However, Kyiv has put forward one condition for Zelenskyy to attend: if NATO is ready to take real steps toward Ukraine's future membership.

According to several signs, the allies are preparing to abandon their official, long-standing approach to Ukraine.

Especially when the decades-old traditions were broken in NATO. According to the editor's article of "European Pravda" Sergiy Sydorenko Direct path to membership, how giving up MAP changed Ukraine's NATO accession procedure.

On April 4, a symbolic day, the 74th anniversary of the Alliance's founding, a historic event took place at its headquarters in Brussels: the 31st member, Finland, joined NATO.

That was not the only crucial thing.

Finland joined NATO in an unprecedented procedure that broke established traditions and rules of the bloc. They gave up the rules in the initial stages of the process, and new "violations" continued until admission. All this was done to prevent Russia from interfering in the process.

It turned out not quite traditionally, but quickly.

In the end, all these "deviations" played into the hands of Ukraine.

NATO's readiness to abandon tradition is truly unprecedented now.

Ukraine also took advantage of this to finally bypass Hungary's veto and hold the Ukraine-NATO Commission with the Ukrainian minister. And in the future, Kyiv will definitely put pressure that its accession procedure should be fundamentally different from what it was until now. There are already reasons for this.

Last year, Finland and Sweden were invited to join, omitting the MAP stage, i.e., the Membership Action Plan, introduced more than 20 years ago and since then has been mandatory for all new members.

Ukraine has long been asking NATO to abandon the MAP and agree on a special procedure. Ukrainian officials raised this issue even before February 24 and additionally reminded after it, but heard either "no" or silence in response.

It turned out that it is pretty real for the Swedes and Finns!

"Why not us?" asked Ukraine.

The signals to Brussels from Kyiv were unambiguous.

At first, Ukraine diplomatically warned that finding a replacement for the MAP would be necessary without options.

There were no positive signals in response.

"If so, then we choose the path ourselves," thought Kyiv and confronted the Alliance with the fact: we are following the Finnish path. And they submitted their "application" without coordinating this step with the Alliance itself.

So now we have got permission to join quickly? The short answer is no. Given the statements of Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Brussels, many people could get a different impression, but it is wrong.

It is, of course, good and essential that the Ukrainian minister continues to emphasise that Ukraine should join NATO without additional procedures - but we have not yet received consent for this.

However, the answer "no" was not voiced either.

Even though the Alliance has not been ready to promise anything to Ukraine formally, changes are taking place. And in fact, they are heartbreaking.

Most importantly, Washington is moving in the right direction. So last year, the USA admitted that Ukraine could join NATO without MAP. It wasn't a promise or a written legal statement, but it was a lot.

It is also important that the summit will be held in Vilnius and Lithuania as the host country will have a special role in it. The Lithuanian Parliament has already adopted an apparent position on this matter.