Nato and the EU are not overly excited about granting membership to Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, fighting to save Ukraine’s sovereignty with his back to the wall against the Russian invasion, has realised a fundamental truth. The United States may have only hastened President Vladimir Putin’s attack by its unceasing provocation and followed it up with economic and social sanctions against Russia, but the Nato leadership that it influences is unwilling to allow entry to Ukraine. Zelenskiy did not hide his disappointment: “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that ... Nato isn’t prepared to accept Ukraine. The alliance is afraid of controversial things, and confrontation with Russia.” That more or less puts paid to his dreams of being the most eastern representative of the military organisation. He has another disappointment in store for him. The European Union, too, is not exactly excited to fast-track membership for Ukraine. He is, thus, cut from any short-term relief in terms of formally associating his country with either of the two groupings. The minimum he can now expect from Fortress Europe is subsidised arms and food and carefully monitored entry of Ukrainian refugees. Zelenskiy should now watch how Nato assuages established European countries like Sweden and Finland which, worked up over blatant Russian aggression, are indicating they want to join Nato. Finland has bad memories of the erstwhile Soviet Union. It has an 800-mile border with Russia that makes it always worry about its sovereignty. Immediately after the Russian invasion, they dropped their longstanding military neutrality by extending military aid to Ukraine.

They, like Ukraine, are among Nato’s Enhanced Opportunity Partners — the next best thing to being members. While Ukraine is cold-shouldered by Europe for shallow action to fight corruption, Finland and Sweden are considered sophisticated economies with stable political systems. How Nato deals with the three admission requests will determine how effective, or partial, Europe is in countering pressure from Russia. A double whammy for Zelenskiy is western European leaders rejecting Ukraine’s appeal to fast-track its European Union membership. The EU says in one voice that it has sympathy for Ukraine but that in the face of opposition from France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, it cannot process the membership right away. Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland impressed upon the EU in Ukraine’s favour, but in vain. Though EU is sitting on the application since 2008, it now argues that it cannot “open an accession procedure with a country at war”. They worry that Ukraine, with its alleged corruption and precarious economic situation, if admitted to EU, may follow Poland and Hungary, which are charged with being democracy-deficit, or Bulgaria and Romania, accused of lingering corruption. The EU, which fast-tracked memberships of Bulgaria and Romania earlier, does not want to be hasty again. That is why it has also kept pending applications of six Balkan states — Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia. Of course, in Ukraine’s case, Russia’s unpredictability is the real reason.