It’s almost like going back to 2008, the NATO summit in Bucharest, when Western leaders remained vague about Ukraine’s future in the alliance. At the time, George W. Bush’s United States was pushing for membership, while France and Germany were much more cautious. The compromise was to write in the final text that Ukraine (and Georgia) would become “NATO members”, without however providing a precise timetable. A declaration both peremptory and nebulous. In retrospect, a disaster: Four months later, Putin called his bluff and invaded Georgia. But in reality, even Kiev’s relationship with NATO did not follow a straight line. Some Ukrainian leaders wanted to join, such as Viktor Yushchenko, president from 2005 to 2010, but other politicians did not. And this rift was reflected in public opinion. The country was not compact. Indeed, most polls between 2005 and 2013 showed that there was only a minority applying to join the alliance.
Russia-Ukraine war, today’s news
It was Russia’s first invasion, in 2014, that changed all that. Viktor Yanukovych, put to flight that year by the Euromaidan protests, had blocked the rapprochement with NATO, even though during his presidency Kiev continued to hold seminars, exercises, and tactical and strategic operations together with the Atlantic alliance. Yanukovych was Putin’s closest candidate, elected in 2010 with a vote base in the most Russian-speaking part of the country. Shortly after winning, on a trip to Moscow, he said Ukraine would remain a “non-aligned European” nation
He escaped to Russia in the night between February 21 and 22, 2014. But there is an important fact to remember: even the following ad-interim government, post-revolution, wanted to maintain neutrality. And public opinion, still in March, remained divided. A poll conducted on behalf of the IRI (International Republican Institute) revealed that 44% of Ukrainians were against joining NATO, and only 34% in favour. And one more thing should be remembered: even if neutral, Ukraine probably felt protected by another pact: the Budapest Memorandum, the 1994 agreement with which it ceded its nuclear arsenal to Russia, and in exchange for disarmament it received guarantees that the integrity of its territory would be respected. That memorandum was ratified by Boris Yeltsin, the Russian president at the time, together with England and the United States (which largely financed the transfer of the warheads).
Let’s go back to 2014. On May 25, the first post-Maidan president, Petro Poroshenko, was elected, and in October, after the parliamentary elections, the new government took office, making NATO membership a priority. It’s easy enough to see why. Russia, blatantly violating the Budapest Memorandum, had annexed Crimea in March, and then invaded Donbas with the army to support the separatists, a movement born as a spontaneous protest against the pro-Western revolution of the Maidan, then infiltrated by forces Russian. Moscow has always denied any involvement, but according to many international reports, Russia already sent thousands of soldiers to fight in Donbas. And this had a predictable effect on Ukrainian public opinion. Feeling attacked and in danger, she began to look much more favorably on NATO. According to a survey by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a think tank in Kiev, in June 2017 69% of Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. Today, quite understandably, the percentages are even higher, ranging from 80 to 90 percent.
At the summit underway in Vilnius, although divided, the allies will try to preserve unity. Two objectives: a compromise to say that Ukraine is approaching NATO, but without rapid membership. The second concerns a web of security commitments strong enough to make credible support for Ukraine “for as long as necessary”. It’s not Article 5, but something that should allow Kiev to defend itself now and in the future.
What are these commitments about? Weapons, intelligence, training, money and so on, which are intended to be provided in a more systematic and binding way, over a longer period of time. This is to avoid that with changes of government, for example in Washington, aid can weaken. A pact which would therefore have something similar to the bond between the United States and Israel.
Even if, in hindsight, the situation in Ukraine is very different. Russia, with its huge arsenal of atomic bombs, is a much more dangerous enemy than Israel’s enemies. to guarantee a future for Kiev there does not seem to be a real alternative to NATO.