Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he expects “the best possible outcome” from next week’s NATO summit in Vilnius, where Kiev expects progress in its aspirations to join the Atlantic Alliance.
This summit comes just over a month after the start of a counter-offensive by Ukrainian troops at the front, which have so far made modest gains despite strong Russian defenses and a lack of airpower and artillery ammunition.
After meeting Polish President Andrzej Duda in Lutsk, western Ukraine, Zelensky said the two leaders agreed to “work together to achieve the best possible outcome” for Kiev at the summit scheduled for July 11-12 in the capital from Ukraine, Lithuania.
“Together we are stronger,” said the Polish president, one of Kiev’s main supporters in NATO.
At the Vilnius summit, Ukraine is expected to receive guarantees of support from the West in the face of Russian aggression, but Kiev’s entry into the Alliance is still an open process.
Both Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg are aware that this perspective is unfeasible before the end of the war with Russia, although the Ukrainian leader hopes for a political signal from member states taking the first steps towards integration. will put.
Support for Ukraine in the NATO accession process, starting in Vilnius, has already received support from member states, including Portugal, and on Saturday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip’s encouragement in this regard was met with some surprise. Erdogan, who maintains close ties with Russia and has served in various mediating roles in the Ukrainian conflict, is one of the topics raised today in a phone conversation between Russian diplomats Sergei Lavrov and Turkish diplomat Hakan Fidan.
However, US President Joe Biden, who flew to the UK for the summit this Sunday, was adamant.
“I don’t think Ukraine is ready to be part of NATO,” he said in an interview with US channel CNN, noting that there is no unanimity among allies about the prospects of taking Kiev “in the middle of the war to record.
“If that were the case, we would be at war with Russia,” he warned, despite his announcement last week to send cluster munitions to fill the ammunition shortage in Kiev.
These weapons are banned in more than a hundred countries, mainly in Europe, signatories to the 2008 Oslo Convention, to which neither the United States, Ukraine nor Russia are parties, and their shipment to Kiev has already earned widespread criticism, including the NATO members include the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Spain and Portugal, in addition to the United Nations and organizations such as Human Rights Watch.
Although they have already been used in the theater of war in Ukraine, Kiev has stated that it intends to use these munitions only for the evacuation of its internationally recognized areas and will not be used to reach Russian territory.
The use of cluster bombs is highly controversial because the charges they drop may not explode immediately and cause many secondary civilian casualties in the long run.
The Russian military offensive on Ukrainian territory, launched on February 24 last year, plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
Source: DN
