Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that Ukraine will be accepted into the North Atlantic Alliance only after it wins the war that Russia launched against it more than two years ago. Zelenskyy stated this during a meeting with officers undergoing training according to alliance standards. Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also attended the meeting. It was written by the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, referring to the video of the meeting, which the president published on the social network.
A day earlier, at a joint press conference with Zelensky in Kyiv, Stoltenberg made it clear that he did not expect Ukraine to receive an invitation to the alliance from the July summit in Washington. All 32 member countries would have to agree on such a step.
“In my personal opinion, we will only get into NATO if we win. I don’t assume that they would accept us into NATO during the war. It would be a risk for some of the members, others are simply skeptical about it,” said the head of state. According to Zelensky, the entry is a political issue “and in order to politically accept Ukraine into the alliance, a victory is necessary”, he added. After that, according to the Ukrainian president, no one will ask whether the country complies with alliance standards and what the level of its armed forces is.
The president considers the fact that Ukraine was not in the alliance to be one of the causes of the war. The skepticism of some NATO members contributed to this, but also the fact that Russia processed them very intensively. Moscow was doing everything to prevent Ukraine from being admitted not only to NATO, but also to the European Union, in order to hinder the development of the neighboring country in an attempt to maintain its own influence in it, Zelenskyy said.
