Give Ukraine rapid path into NATO, says former chief

Anders Fogh Rasmussen says alliance membership for Kyiv would establish a ‘bulwark against an aggressive Russia’.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen led NATO from 2009 until just months after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014. Picture: AFP

NATO must give Ukraine a clear and swift path to membership to establish a “bulwark against an aggressive Russia”, its former secretary-general says.

The alliance’s summit in Lithuania next week may be decisive for Kyiv’s future. A coalition including Britain, Poland and the Baltic states are pushing for a signal that Ukraine will be invited to join, underpinned by security guarantees in the meantime. But Hungary is trying to obstruct the process while the US and Germany are wary of extending the Article 5 mutual defence pledge so long as Ukraine is partly occupied and fighting Russian forces.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who led NATO from 2009 until just months after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, said Ukraine was qualified for membership and could be put on the same fast track as Sweden and Finland as soon as next year, when the alliance will mark its 75th anniversary.

He said NATO had no need to put Ukraine through a “membership action plan”, the hoops candidates are normally expected to jump through over anything from three years to a decade or more.

“The Ukrainian military may be the most combat-ready army in Europe,” Mr Rasmussen said. “They already fulfil all the criteria. The future of Ukraine lies within NATO. Until they can join NATO, they need security guarantees. And all this is with the purpose to act as a bulwark against a still aggressive Russia.

“I don’t think we can create permanent peace and stability on the European continent until we really include Ukraine firmly in our Euro-Atlantic structures.”

Mr Rasmussen, now an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, urged NATO not to repeat the mistakes it made when Ukraine and Georgia applied for membership in 2008.

Both were offered verbal assurances of support without a specific path to membership or security guarantees. Both were later invaded by Russia.

This time, Mr Rasmussen said, Ukraine needed the solid prospect of NATO accession and unambiguous pledges of defensive support from its Western allies, along the lines of a plan he set out last year with Andriy Yermak, Mr Zelensky’s closest aide. Under these proposals, a “core group” of Ukraine’s strongest backers would vow to deploy “all elements of their national and collective power”, potentially including direct military intervention, in response to any future attack on the country.

Mr Rasmussen said Ukraine had “been in the waiting room for 15 years and we’ve seen that waiting room is not safe”. He rejected the argument that it was the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO that led Vladimir Putin to attack in 2014.

“I think the truth is the opposite: namely, it was our failure to provide security guarantees to Ukraine that incited Putin. Maybe most importantly, if you use the argument that we cannot give security guarantees or membership to Ukraine as long as the war is going on, you will de facto give Putin an incentive to continue the war.”

While some NATO members are reluctant to admit Ukraine with parts of the country under Russian occupation, which they fear could risk provoking a direct war with Moscow, Mr Yermak and Mr Rasmussen say the alliance could promise to protect only areas under Kyiv’s control, likening the idea to West Germany’s entry into NATO in 1955.

Mr Rasmussen said it was hard to see how peace talks could start between Russia and Ukraine “in the near future”, dismissing suggestions of Beijing as a mediator. “China is too tightly aligned with Russia within the framework of the no-limits partnership.”

He suggested it was ultimately in Moscow’s interests to work with the West against China.

Another contentious issue at the summit will be national defence budgets. NATO’S leadership is pressing for each country to commit to spend a bare minimum of 2 per cent of its GDP on the military. However, Germany and several other member states have yet to specify how they will reach this threshold in the long term.

THE TIMES