NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said Ukraine has “moved closer” to the Western alliance in the past decade and called for a “framework to ensure Ukraine’s future security” once the war with Russia ends.
Speaking after a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Stoltenberg said the members of the transatlantic alliance had agreed to “work towards creating a Ukraine-NATO council” in which Ukraine’s status would be “equal to that of NATO member states.”
“We all agree that Ukraine has already moved closer to NATO over the past decade,” Stoltenberg said. “We agree that NATO’s door is open — that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance and that this is a decision for allies and Ukraine to make. Russia does not have a veto.”
Stoltenberg also stated that NATO was taking Russia’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus “seriously,” condemning Moscow’s “dangerous rhetoric” but insisting that “so far, we haven’t seen changes in Russia’s nuclear posture.”
Sources told the Reuters news agency that ministers had failed to reach an agreement over the alliance’s first defense plans since the end of the Cold War, with one diplomat saying that Turkey had blocked the decision over the wording of geographical locations, particularly with regard to Cyprus.
A senior US official said, “While regional plans were not formally endorsed today, we anticipate these plans will be part of a series of deliverables for the Vilnius Summit in July.”
Stoltenberg said he expected NATO allies to make a “more ambitious commitment to defense spending” at next month’s summit in Lithuania, at which he also said he was “confident that we will find consensus on how to move Ukraine close to NATO.”