Ukraine in NATO. Road blocked by the US?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky applied to join NATO already in the first year of Russian full-scale aggression. After four years of conflict, this is still a distant prospect. Currently, accession is opposed by, among others: USA, but the Alliance authorities assure that Ukraine's path to NATO is “irreversible”.

For a new country to join NATO, a consensus of all 32 member countries is needed, and currently there is no consensus, said Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the Alliance, in December 2025.

At the same time, he once again recalled that during the NATO summit in Washington in 2024, all member states agreed that Ukraine's path to the Alliance is “irreversible.”

Rutte also reiterated NATO's support for Ukraine and welcomed US diplomatic efforts to end the war.

– Let's be honest, the current US government does not see a place for us in NATO, just like the previous one, and they openly talk about it, but it does not mean that Ukraine will not be there in the future. We have declared that we want to be part of NATO and we are ready to be a strong member that strengthens all allies. (…) Now the ball is in the court of our NATO partners, Zelensky said last week in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan.

The Ukrainian leader mentioned in other statements that His country's accession to NATO is currently not supported not only by the USA, but also by many other countries of the Alliance.

The lack of unanimous support among NATO members for Kiev's accession is caused primarily by the war being waged on Ukrainian territory and the fear of further aggravation of relations with Russia.

– We are not yet at the stage where we in the Alliance are talking about issuing an invitation (to Ukraine) in the near future – said the then US ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, in the fall of 2024, before Donald Trump took power in the White House.

In 2019, Ukraine included in its constitution joining NATO and the European Union as strategic goals of the stateand after the Russian invasion, which began on February 24, 2022, it applied for membership in the Alliance. During the NATO summit in Vilnius in July 2023, it was decided that Ukraine's path to NATO does not require a Membership Action Plan – the standard path planned for new candidates. The NATO-Ukraine Council was also established. However, Kyiv did not receive a direct invitation to join the organization.

In November 2025, the US presented a draft peace plan for Ukraine. According to the document, Kiev would have to write down in its constitution that it would not join NATO, which would have to be confirmed by the Alliance itself. However, in return, Ukraine would receive security guarantees, including: from the US and European NATO allies, “based on the principles of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.”

The proposal was criticized by many European countries, which believed that the plan contained too far-reaching concessions to Russia. Ukraine did not agree to several points of this project, including the neutrality commitment and closing the path to NATO, and presented an alternative plan. The American proposal was then modified. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, conducted through the United States, are ongoing, but these negotiations have not yet resulted in a solution to the conflict.

Both NATO and Allied countries have supported Ukraine in many ways since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. This includes: arms aid and transfer of ammunition, but also intelligence support and training programs for Ukrainian soldiers.

One of the latest initiatives is the PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List) program, launched in August 2025, under which NATO allies finance the purchase of weapons needed by Ukraine from American stocks. This is a response to the suspension of direct military aid by the US. More than two-thirds of the allies joined the program, declaring aid worth USD 4 billion, Rutte announced at the beginning of December. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski announced that the Polish contribution is USD 100 million.

The NATO Secretary General expressed hope that in 2026, allied support for Ukraine will be worth at least $1 billion per month. (PAP)

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