Ukraine's NATO membership: Germany opposes it

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to Ukraine's plan to join NATO immediately, ahead of the upcoming summit of the Western military alliance in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.Speaking at a press conference with Romanian Prime Minister Ion-Marcel Ciolacu in Berlin, Scholz clarified that "nobody can become a member of a defensive alliance (NATO) during a war".

One of the criteria for NATO membership is that "there are no open border disputes", he added.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pressured NATO leaders to put Ukraine on a concrete path to membership, threatening not to attend the summit if they cannot keep their promises.NATO leaders are to discuss deepening ties with Kyiv when they meet in Vilnius, without immediately integrating Ukraine as a member, as the bloc's security guarantees could draw allies into conflict armed with Russia.

“During the Vilnius summit and the preparations for the summit, we are not discussing the subject of a formal invitation. What we are discussing is how to bring Ukraine closer to NATO and consultations are ongoing and I am not in a position to prejudge the outcome of these consultations,” the Secretary General of NATO said earlier. NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.

The Vilnius summit in July will define a vision for Ukraine's future as an independent democratic member of the Euro-Atlantic family, according to Turkish news agency Anadolu.Ukraine formally applied for accelerated NATO membership last September, following Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian regions.Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and the European Union have sent tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons to Kiev: heavier and more advanced weapons, including battle tanks, the Patriot air defense system and British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

However, President Zelensky is always asking for more help and in an interview with NBC News in late June, he claimed that continuing the war with Russia was in the interest of the United States and NATO. In a joint press conference with his Polish and Lithuanian counterparts, Zelensky demanded security guarantees at the NATO summit on the protection of Ukraine until it joined the alliance of NATO.

In an annual address to the nation on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2022, in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin defined the special operation against Ukraine as Russia's fight "to eliminate the threat posed by the neo-Nazi regime that emerged in Ukraine in 2014”.The head of the Kremlin thus underlined that the Ukrainian people would be "held hostage" and that Russia's role would be to free them from the Nazi yoke.Prior to the Russian operation in Ukraine, the Europeans, ignoring Moscow's demands and security interests, stoked the fire of war in Ukraine, and during this operation they provided extensive support to the 'Ukraine.