Why the NATO summit left Ukraine both grateful and disappointed

At this week’s NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in some ways like the boy who receives piles of impressive gifts on Christmas morning – but nevertheless feels disappointment for not getting what he wanted most.

There was an “irreversible” path to NATO membership – but no formal invitation to join the alliance. An impressive range of new weapons – but no green light to use them freely against the Russian aggressors.

At a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden at the close of the military alliance’s gathering Thursday, Mr. Zelenskyy was careful to thank the American people, members of Congress from both parties, and Mr. Biden personally for the substantial and critical U.S. assistance Ukraine has received since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

He expressed gratitude to the 32-nation alliance for what the summit did deliver, including a declaration in the concluding communiqué citing the “irreversible” path. Countries pledged to provide more than $40 billion in assistance over the coming year, while more missile defense systems to thwart Russia’s devastating attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure were announced.

Moreover, Ukraine will soon begin receiving dozens of F-16 fighter jets from several NATO countries. The coveted fighters, which should help Ukraine foil Russian missile attacks and assist in preparations for ground offensives, should be in Ukrainian skies later this summer, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday.

Yet two things Mr. Zelenskyy really wanted – the invitation to join NATO, and further lifting of limitations Mr. Biden has imposed on use of U.S.-supplied long-range armaments on Russian territory – were not offered. The Biden administration, worried about the escalatory potential of strikes inside Russia, currently permits Ukraine to fire long-range weapons across the border only in the Kharkiv region and on Russian forces that are attacking or preparing to attack.

“If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations,” the Ukrainian leader said.

French disappointment

Some NATO countries, including France, have advocated that Ukraine be formally invited to join the alliance. While NATO did declare that Ukraine’s membership path is now “irreversible,” just what that word means for Ukraine’s future accession remains in the eye of the beholder.

U.S. officials who had opposed including the word embraced it once it was placed in a broader context of Ukraine’s European integration, including into the European Union. But French President Emmanuel Macron suggested disappointment, saying the door to NATO was “open, but not that much.”

The word was also not well received by Moscow. The Western alliance should not be surprised that Russia will make every effort to “make sure this irreversible path of Ukraine to NATO leads to the disappearance of either Ukraine or NATO, or better, both,” said Dmitry Medvedev, deputy to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russia’s Security Council.

At his much-scrutinized press conference Thursday evening, Mr. Biden suggested that while there might be further adjustments to the limits on Ukraine’s use of long-range armaments, the policy is likely to stay.

“We’re making ... on a day-to-day basis [decisions on] how far they should go in” to Russian territory, the president said. But overall, he said, “if [Mr. Zelenskyy] had the capacity to strike Moscow, strike the Kremlin, would that make sense? It wouldn’t.”

China decries “sinister motives”

The summit, a celebration of the alliance’s 75th anniversary, was not all Ukraine all the time.

The gathering’s communiqué caused an international stir with its declaration that China has become an enabler of Moscow’s aggression through its “no-limits” partnership with Russia and its deepening support for Russia’s military industrial base.

“NATO hyping up China’s responsibility on the Ukraine issue is unreasonable and has sinister motives,” Chinese government spokesperson Lin Jian said at a daily briefing Thursday. He maintained that China has a fair and objective stance on the Ukraine issue.

The “enabler” language was part of a toughening stance toward Beijing – welcomed by some in Congress in particular as a sign that European allies are signing on to Washington’s more confrontational approach to what it sees as an increasingly aggressive China.

The summit was also marked by steps to deepen cooperation with four Indo-Pacific partners – Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea – at a time when Russia and China are drawing closer, and Russia forges closer links with North Korea and Iran.

In the run-up to the summit, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the growing ties between NATO and Asian partners part of a “new geometry” to confront global challenges.

“Increasingly, partners in Europe see challenges halfway around the world in Asia as being relevant to them,” he said, “just as partners in Asia see challenges halfway around the world in Europe as being relevant to them.”