Ukraine to seek NATO invitation in Brussels next week

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha is urging NATO leaders to invite Ukraine to join the Western military alliance during a meeting in Brussels next week, according to a letter sent to alliance leaders—reflecting the country's frenzied push to gain membership in the alliance in the final days of Biden's presidency. 

The letter, first reviewed by Reuters, comes as Ukraine has re-upped its request for NATO membership to help put an end to Russia's war, including a recent uptick in attacks on its energy infrastructure. It also comes as the Biden administration has granted Ukraine new permissions to fight back against Russia in their final months in office. 

In the letter, Ukraine's foreign minister acknowledged his country's ongoing war with Russia prohibits Kyiv from joining NATO right now. But he argued that an invitation for membership in Brussels would be a powerful show of force—and a major symbolic blow—to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long opposed the idea of their membership in NATO.

"We believe that the invitation should be extended at this stage," Sybiha said in the letter. "It will become the Allies' adequate response to Russia's constant escalation of the war it has unleashed, the latest demonstration of which is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons," he added.

Also on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used an interview on Sky News to up the public pressure for NATO leaders to extend his country a membership offer.

Speaking Friday to Sky News's Stuart Ramsay, the Ukrainian president suggested that NATO could extend membership to the territory of Ukraine still under its control to help accelerate the NATO memberhsip process and wind down Russia's war as quickly as possible.

"If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control," he told Ramsay. NATO should "immediately" cover parts of the country that are under Ukrainian authority, he said, stressing that it it something Ukraine needs "very much otherwise he will come back," in apparent reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a televised address in Moscow, Russia, June 26, 2023. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters (Reuters)

Ukraine would face many hurdles in attempting to join NATO, despite assurances from the alliance that it is on an "irreversible path" to membership.

That's because Ukraine lacks two key requirements for NATO membership: territorial integrity and the absence of ongoing conflict. Currently, Russia controls roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory, Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and author of "Putin's Playbook," told Fox News Digital in an interview Friday. 

Any country hoping to gain membership "cannot have ongoing conflict because of Article 5," Koffler said. 

For Russia,"it is a red line for Ukraine to be part of NATO," Koffler added, since Russian President Vladimir Putin considers Ukraine part of Russia's strategic security perimeter.

NATO members are also split over the idea of accepting Ukraine. "Those who are against it are concerned about Article 5 obligations: admitting Ukraine into NATO would automatically place the United States and the entire NATO alliance at war with Russia because of the collective defense clause," Koffler said.

The State Department said Friday that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken by phone to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Sybiha to discuss battlefield updates and incoming U.S. security assistance in wake of recent Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. On the call, officials said, Blinken "briefed the Foreign Minister on U.S. goals for sustainable support for Ukraine, to be discussed at upcoming diplomatic engagements with NATO and through the Ukraine Defense Contact Group."

The press release stopped short of detailing any further overtures to Ukraine.

Still, Ukraine's push for membership comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his administration brace for the many unknowns of a second Trump presidency. Trump has long expressed skepticism of NATO, and suggested as recently as this year that he could end the war between Russian and Ukraine "in a day."  

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Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 27, 2024. (Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo)

While Ukraine's push for NATO membership is not new, the timeline for leaders to approve their bid has taken on new urgency, as the war nears its third year and as President-elect Trump prepares to take office again.

NATO membership was included as one of the first— and most important—steps in Zelenskyy's multi-part "victory plan" to help win the war against Russia.

The outline, which his administration published in October, suggested that Ukraine could put an end to the war with Russia as early as 2025, if the country's requests are granted for more weapons and the continued ability to carry out military operations on Russian soil. 

President Biden, for his part, has used his final weeks in office to authorize new permissions for Ukraine in the ongoing war with Ukraine.

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Earlier this month, the Biden administration granted Ukraine new permission to use U.S.-supplied long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russian territory. Later, they also signed off on the transfer of anti-personnel mines to bolster Ukrainian army defenses in the east.