Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha has called on his NATO counterparts to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance at a meeting in Brussels next week, Reuters said, citing a letter from Sybiha.

"The letter reflects a renewed push by Kyiv to secure an invitation to join NATO, which is part of a "victory plan" outlined last month by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to end the war triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine says it accepts that it cannot join NATO until the war is over but extending an invitation now would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that one of his main goals - preventing Kyiv from becoming a NATO member - could not be achieved," Reuters said.

NATO diplomats say there is no consensus among NATO members at this stage to invite Ukraine. Any such decision would require the consent of all 32 NATO member states.

Sybiha argued in his letter that now is the time to extend the invitation.

"We believe that the invitation should be extended at this stage," he said.

"It will become the Allies' adequate response to Russia's constant escalation of the war it has unleashed, the latest demonstration of which is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons. I urge you to endorse the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministerial Meeting on December 3-4, 2024," the minister said.

NATO had previously said that Ukraine would join the alliance and that it was on an "irreversible" path to membership, but had not issued a formal invitation or set a timeline.