FT: Biden considers advancing Ukraine’s NATO membership before he leaves office

In one of his final foreign policy decisions as US president, Joe Biden may agree to advance Ukraine’s NATO membership bid at a meeting between Ukraine and its allies due to be held in Germany later this month, The Financial Times (FT) reported on Tuesday.

A source briefed on Biden’s talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington last week told the FT that there were “tentative signs” that Biden might “agree to advance the status of Ukraine’s NATO membership bid” before he leaves office in January.

The leader-level meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contract Group is set to take place on 12 October in Germany, according to the White House, which said in a press release last week that Biden was “determined to provide Ukraine with the support it needs to win”.

Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations told the FT that the White House, which has so far been “sceptical” of Ukraine’s NATO accession, may consider the so-called “West German model” of NATO membership, according to which Bonn joined the alliance in 1955 to ensure its own security, despite its lack of territorial integrity due to the existence of East Germany. “The Russians would hate that, but at least it could be some opening gambit for a compromise,” Shapiro said.

Still, many remain doubtful that NATO extending an invitation to Ukraine would change the course of the war, with one senior Ukrainian official telling the FT that even if Kyiv received one, it would “mean nothing” and would be a “political decision”.

Besides, even the West German model of NATO accession would require “a vast force deployment” to Ukraine by the US and its partners that any US administration “would likely baulk at”, the FT pointed out.

Preventing Ukraine’s NATO accession has been a key Russian objective since before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In December 2021, as Russia amassed its troops near the Ukrainian border, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a “draft agreement” it hoped NATO would sign forbidding “any further enlargement” of the defence alliance, including “the accession of Ukraine” and “other states in Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia”.

Despite NATO pledging support for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion and even saying Kyiv was on an “irreversible path” to join NATO in July, the country’s accession to the alliance has been a contentious issue for many of its members.

But according to an unnamed Ukrainian official, peace in Ukraine is only likely to last if Kyiv is provided with meaningful security guarantees, the FT reported, while a senior Western official told the newspaper that the only way to end the war involved Kyiv giving up some of its territory to Russia in exchange for NATO membership. “Nobody will say it out loud . . . but it’s the only strategy on the table,” the official said.