Despite the Russia-Ukraine conflict becoming a bloody war of attrition, as long as Ukraine thinks it can take advantage of it to elbow its way into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Volodymyr Zelensky government will regard the cost in lives as being a price worth paying for the Eastern European country
Gaining support for Ukraine to be a member of NATO has been an important part of Ukrainian President Zelensky’s shuttle diplomacy among Ukraine’s Western allies over the past two years, apart from pressing them to supply Ukraine with more military aid. But ahead of the approaching NATO summit in Washington on Tuesday, a US State Department official told the media that the Ukrainian leader had been discretely informed during his meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington in June that Ukraine’s NATO membership cannot be considered for now because Ukraine is too corrupt to join NATO.
Zelensky has been trying to tackle the problem head on, in an effort to prevent Washington making corruption an excuse to block Ukraine’s way to NATO membership. In September last year, he fired all six of his deputy defense ministers with no explanation, weeks after dismissing his top defense minister.
But that is far from enough to change Washington’s stance. The anonymous US official said: “We have to step back and applaud everything that Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the last two-plus years… As they continue to make those reforms, we want to commend them, but we want to talk about additional steps that need to be taken, particularly in the area of anti-corruption. It is a priority for many of us around the table.”
As a matter of fact, Biden made that point crystal-clear in an exclusive interview with CNN in July last year, saying that conflict needs to end before the alliance can consider adding Kyiv to its ranks.
The message from the US and its allies is clear-cut: although Ukraine can obtain military assistance from them, they will not allow Ukraine to use NATO membership to drag them all into its fight with the Russians. Corruption is only an excuse Washington is using to shut NATO’s door in Kyiv’s face.
Since it seems impossible for Ukraine, with even its huge losses, to get the membership it desires to transform itself from a buffer zone between Russia and the West to a member of the West, Kyiv should give a serious thought to what its end game is, instead of indefinitely prolonging the conflict.
