NATO’s top generals gather in Kiev
The NATO Military Committee, the bloc’s highest military authority, has gathered in Kiev despite Ukraine not being a member.
The visit comes just a day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Ukraine’s NATO membership “is not on the table as we speak,” noting that accession would require unanimous backing.
Kiev’s potential NATO membership has been one of the central issues of the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has long opposed the US-led military bloc’s eastward expansion and has made Ukrainian neutrality a key condition of any settlement, arguing that NATO’s presence there would pose a direct threat to Russian national security.
Ukraine made joining NATO a foreign policy priority following the Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014 and later enshrined the objective in its constitution. In September 2022, Vladimir Zelensky demanded “accelerated accession.” As recently as July, he argued that Ukraine’s membership would be “entirely natural.”
NATO continues to officially describe Ukraine as being on an “irreversible path” toward entry. However, former Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny, who now serves as Kiev’s ambassador to the UK, said in August that he saw no realistic prospect of it happening.
In a video address on Wednesday, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, announced that he and military representatives from all 32 member states had arrived in Kiev. It is the committee’s first such visit to Ukraine in eight years.
“We are here in full strength with a clear message: the bond between NATO and Ukraine is stronger and stronger,” Dragone said.
According to the NATO official, the delegation discussed Ukraine’s military priorities with the country’s top brass, as well as lessons from the conflict that could be used to strengthen the bloc’s preparedness for “current and future threats.”
Despite being outside the organization, Ukraine has developed extensive military ties with NATO. The bloc says its members provide the overwhelming majority of military assistance received by Kiev and has pledged to continue support.
