The Presidents of the United States and Turkey – Joe Biden and Recep Tayyip Erdogan – made statements regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership. According to the Turkish leader, Kyiv “deserves” to join the defense alliance. At the same time, Biden clarified that such a scenario is impossible in the foreseeable future, but the United States is potentially ready to give guarantees to Ukraine, like Israel.
US proposes ‘Israeli model’
Biden believes that Ukraine is not ready for NATO membership while the country is in a state of armed conflict. According to him, if a ceasefire is achieved, Washington will be ready to provide Kiev security guarantees according to the “Israeli model”.
“I don’t think it (Ukraine) is ready for NATO membership. <…> I don’t think there is unanimity within NATO on whether or not to accept Ukraine into the NATO family now, in the midst of the war,†declared Biden in an interview with CNN.
If Ukraine were accepted into the North Atlantic Alliance at a time when it is in a state of armed conflict with Russia, it would create the conditions for a NATO-Russia clash, the leader said American.
“If the war continues, we will all be at war. We will be at war with Russia if that happens,†Biden said.
According to the President of the United States, Russian leader Vladimir Putin asked at the Geneva summit in 2021 for commitments that Ukraine would not join NATO. Biden said he refused.
“I said we won’t do that, we have an open door policy,” the head of state said.
Susan Walsh/AP
Biden stressed that joining NATO required certain conditions to be met – “from democratization to a whole host of other issues” (he had already said in June that the United States was not going to facilitate membership from Kiev to NATO). According to him, he discussed this issue in detail with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“I underlined, among other things, that the United States is ready – as long as the process (of Ukraine’s accession to NATO) continues, and it will take some time – to provide the security that we provide to Israel,” Biden said.
According to him, it is about the supply of weapons that the country needs to defend itself. A similar scenario will be possible if a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia and a ceasefire are reached, the US president said.
Israel, which is not a member of NATO, is the largest recipient of US military aid since World War II. The concept of the “Israeli model†for Ukraine was first developed in September 2022 by the Chief of Staff of the President of Ukraine, Andrii Yermak, and the former Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The FAZ newspaper wrote that the so-called “Yermak-Rasmussen plan” provides for the protection of Ukraine through a multilateral system of guarantees for the period until the country joins NATO.
Turkey says Kyiv ‘deserves’ NATO membership
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes that Ukraine “definitely deserves” NATO membership. With this statement, he spoke following the results of the talks held on Saturday July 8 in Istanbul with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Francisco Seco/AP
According to the Turkish leader, “there are no losers in a just world”. Turkey wants the parties to resume the search for peace as soon as possible, Erdogan said.
Zelenskyy praised Turkey’s position.
“I raised the issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership and I was happy to hear that President Erdogan supports Ukraine to become a NATO member,” said the Ukrainian leader (quote from the Ukrainian edition of Zerkalo Nedeli).
Erdogan’s statement comes as Turkey postpones final approval of Sweden’s NATO membership, Remarks Associated Press agency. Ankara accuses Stockholm of the Swedish side’s failure to take effective action against Kurdish militants and other groups whose actions Turkey considers a threat to its security.
The question of Ukraine’s NATO membership
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that Kyiv understands the impossibility of joining NATO as long as the armed conflict continues. However, Kyiv wants to get a clear signal that joining the alliance will take place after the fighting is over, underline head of state.
Virginia Mayo/AP
In June, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine would soon receive a signal from the North Atlantic Alliance that it would become a member of a military bloc in the future. At the same time he underlinethat for the country to join the alliance, a victory in the conflict with Russia is necessary.
“The urgent task now is to secure victory for Ukraine as a sovereign and independent state, because if Ukraine does not win, then there is nothing to discuss at all,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with the Washington Post.
According to the Financial Times, the US, UK, Germany and France are working on a deal with Ukraine that would provide Kiev with long-term security guarantees instead of specific pledges to join the EU. NATO.
The possibility of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Alliance is categorically opposed to Moscow. Press secretary of Russian President Dmitry Peskov in April saidthat preventing such a scenario is one of the objectives of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.
In June Peskov declaredthat Russia “will seek to ensure its interests and its security”, which “excludes such an enlargement of the alliance and its direct advance to our borders, including the accession of Ukraine to NATO”.
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