Ukraine's ambassador to the UK and former army chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has explained his widely reported remark that Ukraine will never join NATO, saying he strongly backs the Alliance but believes it must rebuild its outdated doctrine before it could even admit Kyiv, according to Interfax-Ukraine. The war, he argued, has pushed Ukraine technologically ahead of the bloc.
Ukraine's push for lasting security now runs on several tracks at once — NATO membership, European guarantees, and its own rising weight as a security provider whose battlefield lessons allies increasingly want.
The remark that went in circles
Days earlier, at an ambassadors' meeting in Kyiv, Zaluzhnyi said Ukraine would never join NATO as things stand, arguing it cannot join an organization that still holds Second World War-era doctrines — a line that drew wide attention.
He recalled 12 years chasing NATO standards while hearing yearly "fairy tales" about imminent membership. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry later said the words had been taken out of context.
"I am for NATO"
Asked to explain himself at a diplomatic club in Kyiv, Zaluzhnyi said he is firmly a supporter of the Alliance. He noted he led the 2019 shift of Ukraine's forces to NATO standards, rewriting almost 37 laws.
"I made so many enemies you cannot even imagine. I am for NATO," he said.
Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief just said what officials won’t: NATO membership will never happen for Kyiv
Why he says NATO must change
Politically, though, "NATO raises many questions, as a bloc that guarded the old world," he said. In 2026, Ukraine used nearly every weapon NATO fields — save Tomahawks, nuclear arms, aircraft carriers, and F-35 jets — and applied their doctrines in combat.
"The resource is exhausted. Russia found a counter to all of it," he said. NATO, he added, "is in the doctrine of the end of the Second World War, while we are technologically ahead."
Only once the Alliance adopts a completely new doctrine, Zaluzhnyi said, will it be ready to admit Ukraine. He again called for "an absolutely new" security bloc, likely anchored in Europe, citing the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force as a model.
