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Kiev has renewed its push for an invitation to the US-led bloc ahead of a foreign ministers’ meeting this week
Ukraine will not accept any kind of security guarantees as a substitute for NATO membership, according to a Foreign Ministry statement published on Tuesday.
In the document issued ahead of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels this week, Kiev blasted the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal for security guarantees from Russia and the West.
The Foreign Ministry called the pact a “monument to short-sightedness in strategic security decision-making,” and urged its Western backers to issue an invitation to the US-led military bloc during the meeting in Brussels.
“Having the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum behind us, we will not settle for any alternatives, surrogates, or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the ministry said in a statement, marking this week’s 30th anniversary of the memorandum’s signing.
The criticism comes amid recent Russian advances and the upcoming return of US President-elect Donald Trump to the White House in January, which has raised uncertainty over US support as Kiev fears it could be forced to the negotiating table.
“We are convinced that the only real security guarantee for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent factor for further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is only Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the statement said.
Ukraine was left with around 1,700 nuclear warheads after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While this stockpile technically made Ukraine the world’s third-largest nuclear power, the weapons themselves remained under the operational control of Russia, and were surrendered under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. This agreement involved the US, UK, and Russia providing security assurances to Kiev in return for the removal of the weapons.
While Ukraine has never controlled nuclear weapons, in 2022, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky expressed regret about his country agreeing to relinquish them, suggesting that Kiev has “every right” to reverse the decision.
Earlier this year, Zelensky said Ukraine could protect itself by becoming either a nuclear state or a member of NATO. He later backtracked, saying Kiev does not have any alternative “except NATO.”
NATO, however, is “highly unlikely” to heed Kiev’s call for a membership invitation during this week’s meeting, Reuters reported, citing diplomats, saying it would take weeks or even months to reach a consensus from the bloc’s 32 members for the decision.
Ukraine made NATO membership a strategic goal in 2019. This was a red line for Moscow, which has for years expressed concerns about the bloc’s creeping expansion towards its borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Kiev’s NATO ambitions were the key reason behind the current conflict.
