President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented Ukraine’s much-anticipated ‘victory plan’ at the parliament in Kyiv on Thursday. What is in there, what isn’t, and what does NATO have to do with all this?
After showing it to Ukraine’s most important allies and the two candidates for the next US president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented his victory plan to the parliament in Kyiv.
The proposal comprises five points, the first being a bid to join NATO.
According to the latest available data, 84% of Ukrainians want their country to be a member of the alliance.
Over two and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion and countless bombardments, a wrecked energy system and thousands of lives sacrificed to defend the country, the level of support for NATO is not just stable — it keeps growing.
Ukrainians understand that if they were in NATO, Moscow wouldn’t have invaded in 2014 and then again in 2022.
After the first Russian invasion and the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, five years later, in 2019, Ukraine amended its Constitution with a pledged commitment to becoming a member.
Signing the amendment, former President Petro Poroshenko told the parliament that Ukraine should “submit a request for EU membership and receive a NATO membership action plan no later than 2023.”
And Ukraine did, but under very different circumstances. In September 2022, six months into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv applied for NATO membership after the Kremlin proclaimed it had annexed the country’s southeast, including the territories it does not control.
Is Ukraine closer to NATO now?
The answer is yes and no. Two years since Kyiv sent the application, NATO has repeatedly reiterated its stance, saying the alliance “condemns in the strongest possible terms Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine – which is an independent, peaceful and democratic country, and a close NATO partner.”
“NATO and allies continue to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” the alliance stated.
NATO has also repeatedly mentioned its “open-door” policy towards Ukraine, but it has not gone beyond that.
The “open door” policy applies not only to Ukraine. It is based upon Article 10 of the Washington Treaty, which states that membership is open to any “European state in a position to further the principles of this treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.”
But even if NATO doors are open as the alliance claims, Ukraine hasn’t been able to enter them.
Ukraine-NATO conundrum
NATO has declared Ukraine will join its ranks and its path to the alliance is irreversible. But it has said Kyiv cannot join while at war and declined to put a timeline on membership. Kyiv, on the other hand, insists that Ukraine needs NATO to finish the war.
Critics say Ukraine’s military standards are not on par with the alliance and that the eastern European country has a long way to go. But others argue that Ukraine has already proven itself to have one of the most powerful armies in Europe, which no longer means Ukraine’s NATO accession should be considered a “mésalliance” — an unsuitable marriage.
Given the membership conundrum, one idea has been widely circulating in the media over the past few weeks: the West German model. This model entails admitting only those parts of the country into NATO over which Kyiv exercises complete control.
The alliance’s former Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said there may be ways to make it possible, such as the security guarantees that the US provides to Japan, which do not cover the Kuril islands.
Japan has claimed four of the islands in the archipelago as its own yet they are controlled by Russia after being seized by the Soviet Union in 1945.
“When there is a will, there are ways to find a solution,” he told FT in an interview.
Explaining how this could possibly work, Stoltenberg told the FT,“you need a line which defined where Article 5 is invoked and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border”.
This is where things get even more complicated.
Kyiv’s take on the West Germany NATO membership model
It has been almost two years since Ukraine liberated the city of Kherson and the right bank of the river the region rests on.
Since then, the territory has been Kyiv under Kyiv’s control, yet at the same time, it is shelled and attacked daily with artillery and drones by the Russian army. Where would this demarcation line be in the Kherson region?
Where would it be in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is completely free, and yet where Russian missile attacks are a near-daily occurrence?
Where would it be in Zaporizhzhia, the city 50km away from the frontlines, which has been a target for Russian shelling and a major hub for Ukrainian forces?
Or even Kyiv? The capital has never been under Russian control, but would the children’s hospital that was destroyed by Russian missiles just a few months ago be inside this red line or out of it?
In simple terms, the “Ukrainian wall’ does not exist — even Lviv in Western Ukraine, less than 100km away from Poland and the NATO border, is still being shelled by Russia.
How Moscow sees it, and what is Zelenskyy’s NATO dilemma
Most Western proponents acknowledge that Moscow would hate the idea of a West Germany NATO model for Ukraine.
One of the main arguments of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was NATO’s alleged expansion. In addressing the Russian population, Moscow officials often claim that Russian forces are already fighting NATO in Ukraine.
But Moscow didn’t have much to say when Finland and Sweden simultaneously handed in their official letters of NATO applications in May 2022, three months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Kyiv’s possible aspirations won’t go unnoticed the same way, and Moscow would indeed hate the idea of a West German NATO model for Ukraine. But it is even trickier since most Ukrainians would hate it, too.
Not only would this idea be hard to sell to the existing NATO members, who will surely question the NATO borders in Ukraine, but it would be almost impossible to implement for Ukrainians.
Firstly, due to the legal limitations.
According to the first deputy speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandr Korniienko, this would require changes in the Constitution, which cannot be made as they would be in conflict with martial law.
Declared on the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, martial law has restricted some constitutional rights and freedoms. Article 157 of the Constitution asserts that the Constitution may not be amended “in the conditions of martial law or a state of emergency.”
But the Constitutional Court has continued its work during the war, though on a limited basis.
In particular, granting Ukraine EU membership candidate status has incentivised the administration to embark on a new set of reforms to meet the European Commission’s expectations, one of which is ensuring an independent judiciary.
How do Ukrainians feel?
Even if Ukrainian authorities find a way to draw a more or less clear demarcation line and amend the Constitution, they will have to deal with the Ukrainian people.
The official position of the Ukrainian government, President Zelenskyy, and the minister of foreign affairs, has been that there will be “no trade of territory for a ceasefire or for peace”.
Two years and a half into the full-scale invasion, almost every Ukrainian family has someone at the frontlines; many lost their loved ones, and many are waiting for their family members to come back from Russian captivity while they have no news if they are alive and if they are coming back.
Each and every Ukrainian has experienced Russian bombardments and drone attacks for over 960 days and nights. Millions have left Ukraine and have been displaced internally within the country.
It will be very hard for Zelenskyy to tell these people that some of the territories will be protected by NATO, but the others won’t. Ukrainians feel that the price they have already paid and the sacrifice they had to make are way too high.
They feel they cannot accept any concessions at this stage when they have been fiercely defending their country and the idea of a democratic free world against all odds when the rest of the world said it was not a matter of “if” but rather of “when” Ukraine would fall to Russia.
And Zelenskyy knows it very well after seeing his popularity dip. While over 84% of Ukrainians support the country’s full membership in NATO, just 59% of the population trust Zelenskyy, he is aware the hardest and the most complicated, if not impossible, negotiations he can face won’t be with NATO or the US, but rather with the nation he represents.
