Biden, NATO leaders to meet with Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s membership remains ambiguous

President Biden and other NATO leaders will meet Wednesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the second day of the major summit hosted in Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius.

The crucial meeting comes a day after leaders committed to providing Ukraine with more military assistance to fight against Russia but failed to offer the country membership to the international alliance, prompting a critical response from the Ukrainian leader.

Ukraine’s future membership remains the most divisive issue at this year’s summit, as leaders are worried a formal invitation could provoke further Russian aggression.

Zelenskyy said Wednesday that he wants to ensure Ukraine “will have this invitation when security measures will allow. We want to be on the same page with everybody.”

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Zelenskyy has supporters in NATO who are willing to accept Ukraine as its newest member, but some oppose the move, and others remain on the fence.

Biden has explicitly said he does not think Ukraine is ready to join NATO and previously cited concerns that the country’s democracy is unstable and corruption in its administration remains deeply rooted.

He also validated NATO’s mission under Article 5 of the NATO charter, where members are obligated to defend each other from attack, which would subsequently draw the U.S. and other countries into the war with Russia — should Ukraine be added as a member.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said Wednesday any consensus from NATO must be “to the benefit of everyone.”

“We have to stay outside of this war but be able to support Ukraine. We managed that very delicate balancing act for the last 17 months. It’s to the benefit of everyone that we maintain that balancing act,” he said.

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Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins, whose country has a long, troubled history with Russia, said he would have preferred more for Ukraine.

“There will always be a difference of flavor of how fast you would want to go,” he said. Karins added, however, “At the end of it, what everyone gets, including Ukraine, and what Moscow sees is we are all very united.”

On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said in Vilnius he had faith Ukraine would be accepted into NATO, but he would “like this faith to become confidence, confidence in the decisions that we deserve, all of us, every soldier, every citizen, every mother, every child.”

“Is that too much to ask?” he asked during his speech in a town square.

That same day, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced the new NATO-Ukraine Council, a permanent body where the 31 allies — the previous NATO countries with the newly added Finland — and Ukraine can call for meetings in emergency situations.

The council is a temporary balancing act in appeasing those who want to bring Ukraine as close as possible to the military alliance and critics who do not wish for Ukraine to actually join it.

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On Tuesday, the NATO leaders also said that Ukraine can join “when allies agree and conditions are met.”

The ambiguous comments left Zelenskyy disappointed, and he responded to them in a tweet calling these conditions “unprecedented and absurd.”

“It’s unprecedented and absurd when [a] time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a lengthy tweet Tuesday morning. He also said the international alliance was disrespecting his country and was subsequently “motivating” Russia in the process.

At a minimum, commitments on Wednesday will include a new G7 framework that would provide for Ukraine’s long-term security.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who supports Ukraine’s membership, said: “Progress on the pathway to NATO membership, coupled with formal, multilateral, and bilateral agreements and the overwhelming support of NATO members will send a strong signal to President Putin and return peace to Europe.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.