The desire to join NATO has not blinded Ukraine to the substantial cracks within the alliance.
The ambassador admitted that the country’s faith had been shaken, in part because of NATO’s “behavior in the first years of the war, when it deliberately tried to distance itself from all key processes related to providing Ukraine with the most necessary support — lethal weapons.”
Following Trump’s reelection and Washington’s decision to scale down its support of Kyiv, NATO took a more active role in the country’s defense, and today the alliance coordinates more than 80 percent of all military assistance to Ukraine.
While a majority of Ukrainians still wish for their country to join NATO, support for the alliance has been steadily dropping since 2022, when a record 89 percent of citizens expressed support for membership. In the years that have elapsed since then, the pressures of war have led Ukraine to gain defensive experience and develop its own effective weapons systems.
Getmanchuk said Kyiv is today positioned to be a partner that has something to offer the alliance in return for aid.
“Even without being a NATO member, we are the only country that, in practice, is already implementing the Alliance’s Strategic Concept,” she said, referring to the document that lays out key objectives and explicitly names adversaries whose aggressive behavior must be halted.
Ukraine, she said, was the alliance’s key partner in “confronting its most direct and significant threat, which has been defined as Russia.”