One of Ukraine's most respected generals has said out loud that the country's constitutional goal of NATO membership will never happen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's ambassador to Britain, does not see Kyiv's path to NATO membership, he said in a discussion on Euro-Atlantic integration at a meeting of ambassadors in Kyiv, European Pravda reports.
The statement is striking because of who made it and from where. Zaluzhnyi, the former commander-in-chief, is, as ambassador to a leading NATO member, formally part of the machinery pursuing the alliance path.
"I know NATO very well. For about 12 years, I personally worked on us mastering NATO standards and listened every year to fairy tales that said that any moment now we'd join NATO. Unfortunately, we will never join it," he said.
His case against joining
Zaluzhnyi argued the obstacle runs both ways. Ukraine cannot join at the level of development its Armed Forces have reached, "an organization that holds the doctrines of the Second World War," he said, dismissing NATO's capabilities despite the membership of Britain, the US, and others.
He was blunt about the alliance's trajectory. NATO will most likely stay in the same form it is now, he said, and would need 12 years, as Ukraine has, to reach the standards required to match even half the Russian level.
Despite this assessment, Zaluzhnyi acknowledged that "Ukraine needs technologies that are currently still held by NATO countries, including in areas such as anti-ballistic missile defense and space capabilities."
What he proposes instead
That view aligns Ukraine's security future with the European defense architecture now under discussion, the coalition of the willing, and the anti-ballistic coalitions Ukraine has helped assemble, rather than with the transatlantic alliance.
Zaluzhnyi's remarks are his own assessment, delivered in a diplomatic discussion, and Ukraine's official policy remains the constitutional Euro-Atlantic course.
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