Brussels – Less discussion on the peace process and more military aid. That is the message that NATO’s new Secretary General, former Dutch premier Mark Rutte, brought to the North Atlantic Alliance headquarters in Brussels about the war in Ukraine. Expressing a position shared by several member states—and Kyiv—the organization’s leader explained for the umpteenth time how reinforcing Ukraine’s armed forces is the only way to enable the aggrieved country to negotiate a “just peace”. However, no one has yet given an opinion on such a peace’s contours, including the thorny issue of Kyiv’s membership in NATO.
Race against time
The two-day meeting of the 32 member states’ foreign
ministers to discuss Ukraine and the Middle East began today (Dec. 3) at NATO
headquarters in Brussels. The meeting will also be attended by EU High Representative Kaja Kallas, who travelled to Kyiv on her first day in office (Dec. 1) to tangibly demonstrate her support for the country attacked by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
It will instead be the last meeting attended by Antony Blinken in the U.S. quota, given the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump next January 20. And after all, today’s and tomorrow’s has all the flavour of a race against time to ensure that Kyiv “gets what it needs” (Blinken dixit) to withstand Moscow’s army aggression before the New York-based tycoon, who has boasted that he can end the conflict within 24 hours, returns to the White House.
“More guns, less discussion”
No one knows Trump’s plan yet, but critics of the president-elect fear that forcing Ukraine to the negotiating table now that the situation on the ground is turning in Russia’s favour would mean forcing the former Soviet republic into an unjust peace, the terms of which would be dictated by the Kremlin. Brussels wants to avert such an outcome.
“I think Ukraine does not need more ideas about what a peace process could look like,” Rutte explained to reporters, but “more military aid”. “We could sit down and have a cup of coffee and discuss the many ways” in which hostilities could be stopped, he continued, but it would rather be the case to “make sure that Ukraine has everything it needs to be in a strong position when the peace talks start—when the Ukrainian government will have decided that it is ready to act on this.” The NATO Secretary welcomed the news that Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, the United States, and Sweden have increased their military aid to Kyiv, but stressed that “we all need to do more.” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani confirmed that Italy continues “to support Ukraine from all points of view: politically, financially, economically, militarily” and that, with regard to air defence, “we have done everything we could” to help the attacked country defend itself.
The difficulties at the front
On the ground, meanwhile, inertia is favouring Moscow’s troops. Today, the front “is moving slowly westward, not eastward,” the Alliance leader acknowledged, albeit “with many losses on the Russian side,” something like 700,000 dead and seriously wounded. All this while elite North Korean soldiers are now largely operational in the Kursk oblast, representing, according to Rutte, a “huge escalation” in the conflict.
“We know that the situation on the battlefield is difficult, and we must do everything we can to get more ammunition and equipment” to Ukraine, he continued, “especially now that winter is coming” and Russian attacks are intensifying on energy infrastructure. Kyiv’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, has called on NATO members to send at least 20 new anti-aircraft defence systems to counter the enemy’s missile attacks.
Kyiv in NATO?
However, while sending Western arms may keep Ukrainian resistance alive in the short term, at least until peace negotiations begin, the long-term stabilization of that piece of Eastern Europe will need credible security guarantees. “The only real guarantee of security for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent against further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” reiterated Kyiv’s Foreign Ministry in a note, which states that “with the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum behind us, we will not accept any alternative, surrogate, or substitute” for full membership in the North Atlantic Alliance. The reference is to the pact, signed on December 5, 1994, between Moscow and Kyiv, through which Ukraine ceded its nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for security guarantees from the Kremlin.
The statement echoed remarks made last weekend by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he admitted for the first time that Kyiv’s armed forces “do not have the strength” to militarily recapture Russian-occupied regions and that “diplomatic solutions” will have to be found. More than two and a half years after the start of the large-scale invasion, Zelensky has partially backtracked on the position he has held so far, opening up to the possibility of negotiating the return of part of the territories under occupation instead of insisting on their liberation by arms.
But, this reasoning goes, to negotiate such restitution, one needs to have strength at the negotiating table, and to have strength, one needs to respond blow by blow on the battlefield. So Western aid is needed, and it is also needed, as soon as possible, for NATO to take responsibility for ensuring Kyiv’s security as soon as the fighting stops.
Not so fast
An eventuality described as “unacceptable” and even a “threatening event” by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for whom “the security of one country cannot be guaranteed at the expense of the security of another one”—a principle Russia itself violated in February 2022 by invading Ukraine. The former Soviet republic’s entry into NATO, he urged, “would be an event that would threaten us” and above all “would not eliminate the root causes of what has been going on” for more than two and a half years.
The same Rutte does not want to leave room for speculation. Ukraine—he seems to want to reassure Moscow—will not be joining the alliance any time soon. Members of the latter, he confirmed, “agree that Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” on Kyiv’s “irreversible path” toward joining the organization. “But I think we need to focus a lot,” rather than on what is to come in the indefinite future, “on what is needed now,” namely precisely militant aid to resistance.
Tajani also agreed: “We are all in favour of Ukraine joining NATO“, he told reporters, “just as we are in favour of Ukraine joining the European Union.” “Certainly, there is a path to be taken,” conceded the Italian vice-premier, acknowledging, however, that the Ukrainians “are making great strides”. Kyiv’s destiny, in any case, “is to join NATO in the future,” even if this future appears to be anything but near.
In Trump’s court
The alliance’s number one also returned to his talk with Trump last month. Regarding the conflict in Ukraine, the two agreed that “any agreement” on peace will have to be “a good agreement,” that is, it will have to consider the demands of the attacked country. And it will also have to signal to Moscow’s allies—-starting with Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran—that one cannot invade a country and expect to get away with it.
“This is crucial for our defence not only in Europe but also in the U.S. and the Indo-Pacific,” explained Rutte, who said Washington would face “a serious threat” from these actors if Ukraine were forced to sign a peace agreement too favourable to Russia. What would keep Xi Jinping from attacking Taiwan or Kim Jong-un from launching ballistic missiles at Seoul or Tokyo if Putin succeeded in obtaining beneficial peace in Ukraine?
Zelensky, for his part, also called for closer cooperation between his team on the one hand and, on the other, that of the president-elect and the team managing the transition in Washington. “We need to prepare carefully for next year,” said the Ukrainian leader, who reiterated that it is important that “U.S. policy not change so that the United States does not seek a compromise between the killer and the victim.”
Tajani’s comment was also along the same lines: “The goal is to arrive at peace even with the new American administration,” he reiterated, stressing that a “just peace” means “the independence of Ukraine.” On the timetable for achieving such a result, he pointed out that “everyone is convinced that a ceasefire will be reached in 2025,” and that Moscow and Kiev are seeking military successes now to sit at the table from a position of strength.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
