This week in Sarkari Result Daily News Network’s special program Shaurya Path, we wanted to know from Brigadier Shri DS Tripathi (Retd) that the President of Ukraine has said that it is possible to achieve the goal of NATO membership. Will Ukraine really succeed? In response, he said that after the invasion by Russia, Ukraine had intensified its efforts to join NATO, but this goal has not been achieved yet. He said that considering the current situation, NATO will not give membership to Ukraine because if Kiev joins NATO, it will be the responsibility of every NATO member to help it and no country will want to fight a lost battle. He said Eastern European countries say that some kind of road map should be presented to Kiev at the NATO summit. He said the US and Germany in particular are wary of any move that could take the alliance closer to war with Russia.
Brigadier Shri DS Tripathi Ji (Retd) said Russian President Vladimir Putin cited NATO’s expansion towards Russia’s borders over the past two decades as the main reason behind his decision to send thousands of troops into neighboring Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Have cited. He said any expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must be agreed to by all 31 members, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has already rejected a formal invitation to Kiev for the summit.
Brigadier Shri DS Tripathi Ji (Retd) said that in 2008, NATO had agreed at the Bucharest summit that Ukraine – which was part of the Moscow-ruled Soviet Union in 1991 – could join the alliance. But NATO leaders did not give Kiev a so-called Membership Action Plan (MAP) that lays out a road map to bring it closer to the bloc. Moscow then illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and supported separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine.
Brigadier Shri DS Tripathi (Retd) said that during his visit to Kiev this April, Stoltenberg had said that Ukraine’s “rightful place” was in NATO, but he later clarified that it would remain in it as long as the war with Russia continued. Whose forces now occupy eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. He said that in early June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country understood the situation, but later this month he reiterated his call for a “political invitation” to Ukraine into NATO. He said that under the MAP process adopted by other former communist countries in Eastern Europe, countries have to prove that they meet political, economic and military criteria and are capable of contributing militarily to NATO operations.
Brigadier Shri DS Tripathi (Retd) said that since 1999, most of the countries wishing to join NATO have participated in MAP, although this process is not mandatory. He said that Finland and Sweden, which were previously neutral countries and worked closely with NATO, were invited to join the alliance directly. He said it was unclear what Ukraine’s path to membership would look like as more and more countries, including Britain and Germany, were suggesting leaving the MAP process. He said that since Russia’s all-out invasion, Ukraine’s military has taken big steps towards NATO standards. This process is accelerating as its Soviet-made weapons and ammunition are gradually being depleted and the West is training Ukrainian troops according to NATO standards and sending more and more advanced weapons.
Brigadier Shri DS Tripathi (Retd) said that at the core of the NATO alliance is a mutual assistance clause, which was created in 1949 with the primary objective of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on Allied territory. He said this is cited as one of the main reasons why Ukraine cannot join NATO while it is in conflict with Russia, as it could immediately draw the alliance into active war. He said Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty states that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all allies. He said Stoltenberg made clear that while NATO should discuss options for providing security assurances to Ukraine for the post-war period, security guarantees under Article 5 would only be provided to full members of the alliance. He said there is also a position that the Kremlin portrays the expansion as evidence of Western hostility towards Russia – which Western powers deny, saying the alliance is purely defensive in nature. He said Moscow has said that if Ukraine joins NATO it will cause problems for years to come.
