Kyiv Expects Invitation to Join NATO at Washington Summit – Zelensky’s Office Chief

Kyiv hopes to obtain a formal invitation to NATO membership at the Alliance's 75th anniversary summit in Washington in July, according to President Zelensky’s office chief.

“Only Ukraine’s invitation to NATO will give Europe and the world real chances to return to true security,” Andriy Yermak, Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office said at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference this weekend.

The prospect of opening Ukraine’s accession negotiations on NATO membership at the Washington summit was one of the main topics of discussion, involving Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister of the UK, and moderated by Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of Poland from 1995 to 2005.

“Our struggle and this support have shown that the majority of people in the world are on the side of good. We see that this support remains at a very high level, and it is important to maintain it,” Yermak said.

According to him, “arguments suggesting that Ukraine’s accession to NATO could lead to further escalation look strange to Ukrainians, as our country has been living in the conditions of the dreadful full-scale war for two years already.”

“The failure to invite Ukraine to the Washington summit, we believe, could indeed trigger a new escalation – in the Middle East, in other regions of our planet. Only the invitation and real concrete steps towards Ukraine’s full membership will give the world and Europe real chances to return to security,” he said.

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Yermak said that to advance this issue, the International Task Force on Security and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine was created, with former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Yermak himself as co-chairs.

Boris Johnson, as a member of the International Task Force, also expressed the belief that at the upcoming NATO summit, Ukraine should receive an invitation to begin negotiations on Alliance membership.

“And we need to stop using the argument about escalation,” said Johnson. “The way to prevent escalation is to do much more to protect Ukraine.”