US Ambassador to NATO Smith: At Washington summit, allies to talk about concrete steps aimed at bringing Ukraine closer to membership
U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Julianne Smith has said that the allies, at a summit in Washington, will send a signal to Ukraine that the alliance is taking concrete steps to make Kyiv closer to membership and another one to Russian President Vladimir Putin that they "aren't going anywhere" and continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
She said this at a press briefing on Tuesday in response to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent's question about expected outcomes of the summit for Ukraine and whether it is realistic that Kyiv would receive an invitation to become a member of NATO.
"As for the summit this summer, I do not expect the Alliance to issue an invitation at this juncture. I do anticipate that the Allies will be able to signal that the Alliance continues to move closer to Ukraine and that we are taking concrete steps to serve as a bridge between where we are now and the full-fledged membership. […] We very much hope that President [of Ukraine Volodymyr] Zelenskyy will be able to join us in person and I think he will continue to hear unwavering unity and resolve in Allies' support for his country. And we will be able to signal most importantly to President Putin that we aren't going anywhere in terms of our support for Ukraine. All of us will continue to support them for as long as it takes," the ambassador said.
Smith recalled that at the Vilnius summit last year the Allies explicitly stated that Ukraine's future is in the NATO alliance.
"We reaffirmed what the Alliance said in 2008 [at the Bucharest summit] when Allies noted that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance. And we've worked very hard since the Vilnius summit last year to move out on a number of steps to continue to help our friends in Ukraine with the necessary reforms inside their own country to move closer to Euro-Atlantic integration both in their integration with the European Union and with the NATO alliance. And we continue to focus first and foremost on supporting them in the current fight and ensuring that they can prevail on the battlefield," she said.
