Rift persists within NATO on Ukraine’s accession
July 14th, 2023Commentators offer diverging interpretations of the outcome of the NATO summit in Lithuania as to Ukraine’s future membership in the alliance.
In Népszava, Tamás Rónay suggests that Ukraine has been brought nearer to NATO membership at the summit held in the Lithuanian capital, as France joined Poland and the Baltic states in urging more reticent members to set a path for Ukraine to become a full member of the alliance. But even with NATO keeping Ukraine waiting at least until the war is over, Rónay continues, Russian President Putin’s nightmare is coming true, as new countries join the alliance and as Turkey turns towards its NATO allies after flirting with Moscow for the past few years.
In an entirely different vein, László Szentesi Zöldi writes in Magyar Nemzet that by giving Ukraine a chance to join, the West would risk a nuclear war because by doing so, it would infringe on Russia’s vital security interests. He hopes, however, that the US administration will seek ways to end the war or at least freeze the conflict in Ukraine before the campaign for next year’s presidential elections begins, and the warring sides will also recognize that their chances to achieve their original goals are minimal. He reads a phone conversation between CIA director William Burns and Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergey Narishkin during the Prigozhin mutiny as an encouraging sign in that respect.