How Ukraine got a chance to join NATO and what Rutte's visit has to do with it

On 1 October, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte officially took over as NATO Secretary General.

That same day, during his first press conference, Rutte announced that supporting Ukraine would be one of his three priorities in office and promised to bring Ukraine closer to joining the Alliance. 

To illustrate that this was not just rhetoric, shortly after taking office he began preparing for a visit to Ukraine, arriving in Kyiv on 3 October for a brief visit.

Unfortunately the public signals from the new Secretary General began and ended with this symbolic gesture. 

In his comments regarding Ukraine's path towards membership, he stuck to general statements and revealed no new developments.

Read more in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, the European Pravda's editor - Rethinking Ukraine's NATO future with the new Secretary General: the outcome of Rutte's visit to Kyiv.

The possibility of inviting Ukraine to join the Alliance is being seriously discussed, albeit privately.

This had been kept secret for some time, but after the US media leaked the news that even the White House is now working on this idea, Kyiv and partner states admitted that discussions are underway.

There is no doubt that the invitation will be on the agenda at the Ramstein meeting being held in Germany on 12 October. This is one of the reasons why the Ukraine Defence Contact Group is meeting at leader level, in the presence of the US president.

The reason for this seismic shift is that Biden has stepped down as a presidential candidate and realised that this term will mark the end of his political career. Thus the question of his legacy has arisen.

Biden has dedicated over 50 years of his life to politics and cares deeply about the legacy he will leave in the history books, and the last four years haven’t yielded much in the way of good news.

Abandoning the overly cautious policy toward Russia’s war and inviting Ukraine to join NATO are being considered as potential ways of achieving this.

That is why Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy included a clause on NATO membership in his Victory Plan. According to European Pravda's sources, he initially received positive feedback on this idea from Washington.

So does this mean the invitation is a done deal? Unfortunately not.

Comments made by Zelenskyy after talks with the NATO Secretary General bear this out.

Indeed, even with Biden’s backing, there are still several significant obstacles standing in the way of an invitation.

The first (and simpler) obstacle is that while the US’s influence within NATO is substantial, the Alliance does not make decisions unilaterally: it operates by consensus. In order to invite Ukraine to join, it will be necessary to win over German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leaders of two countries that have special relationships with the Kremlin – Slovakia and Hungary.

But there is another obstacle that probably poses even more of a challenge. How will this invitation be formulated given that part of Ukraine’s internationally recognised territory is occupied? To what part of Ukraine will NATO’s Article 5 collective defence obligations apply if Ukraine becomes a member? How can the compromise wording be made acceptable to President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people? 

There are as yet no answers to any of these questions. But the search for these answers is what makes the NATO Secretary General’s visit so significant.

And the fact that Mark Rutte demonstrated an ability to make bold decisions in his previous position gives grounds for cautious optimism regarding the format of the invitation – provided, of course, that the discussion reaches its final stage.

In any case, it’s good that the discussion has begun at all. After all, just four months ago it seemed completely impossible.