The White House on Friday said President Joe Biden and fellow NATO leaders will discuss at next week’s summit what steps Ukraine must complete to join NATO and that Kyiv has additional reforms to make, as it fights Russian invaders.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said Ukraine will not be voted into NATO membership at the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, but he encouraged Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy to attend to discuss the matter.
“The NATO summit will dive into the question of NATO’s relationship with Ukraine both the question of its pathway towards future membership and the question of an ongoing partnership that has existed for several years,” he said.
He said NATO allies are discussing whether Ukraine has moved beyond the need for a Membership Action Plan. Under the MAP process followed by other former communist countries in eastern Europe, candidates have to prove they meet political, economic and military criteria and are able to contribute militarily to NATO operations.
Biden has repeatedly said “there is an open door, that there is a pathway for Ukraine and that Ukraine needs to take additional reforms,” to move to NATO membership, Sullivan said. “That remains true today,” he said.