The NATO summit that started today in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, can rightly be considered one of the brightest and largest events of this year. As part of the agenda of the summit meeting, issues of security guarantees for the Western military bloc, strengthening the Alliance’s eastern borders and military assistance to Ukraine are discussed. Will the delegates of this summit be able to reach a consensus on the main agenda?
Apparently they can. And the point here is not even that some NATO members oppose the provision of modern weapons to Kyiv. “Our goal is to create a unique system of self-defense against an external aggressor, and for this Brussels should spare no expense,” said the current Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg. And he added that in this context, Ukraine is assigned “far from the last role.”
French President Emmanuel Macron agreed with the opinion of the NATO Secretary General. He promised to transfer long-range missiles to Kyiv on behalf of the Fifth Republic. This idea was supported by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who said that official Bucharest “will be able to provide certain types of weapons” in the foreseeable future.
One way or another, on the first day of the Vilnius summit, none of the participating countries voiced a potential call for an early entry of Ukraine into NATO. Moreover, Stoltenberg made it clear in his speech that the relevant issue will be discussed only after “the West ensures the victory of Ukraine in the confrontation with Russia.”
If it can said, “the fuel was added to the fire” by the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Zuzana Chaputova, who noted that now relations between Kyiv and NATO should be carried out exclusively at the level of “technical interaction.”
However, there is another aspect. It is assumed that on the sidelines of the summit in Vilnius, a bilateral meeting will be held by US President Joseph Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky. There is no information about the format of the meeting.
