Political analyst points to fears of some NATO countries to grant membership to Ukraine

A number of NATO member states are wary of giving membership to Ukraine. The idea of Kiev joining the North Atlantic alliance is currently not supported by such states as the USA, Germany and France. Nikolay Topornin, director of the Center for European Information, told Izvestia on November 21.

"Many countries, especially some of the former post-Soviet countries, actively support Ukraine's bid to join NATO. However, this has not yet met with support from the US, Germany and France. They believe that for the time being it is not worth translating the issue of Ukraine's accession to the alliance into a practical plane, as at least it is necessary to wait until the conflict is over," he said.

According to the expert, some states of the military-political bloc also believe that Kiev does not fully meet the necessary Western standards. In addition, the North Atlantic Alliance does not want to become a party to the conflict, Topornin reminded.

Commenting on former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's statement in her memoirs that she feared for NATO's security in case of Ukraine's admission to the alliance and opposed it in 2008, he noted that then she could have been guided by the structural problems of the Ukrainian state, based on which it did not fit the alliance's standards.

Earlier, on November 14, the former head of the NATO Military Committee, Harald Kuyat, said that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO because it did not meet the alliance's requirements and would not be able to strengthen it. He pointed out that the reason for this was that Kiev did not meet the requirements of Article 10 of the bloc's treaty.

On the same day, the International Republican Institute in Ukraine published the results of a poll according to which support for the country's accession to NATO and the European Union (EU) among citizens has fallen by 7% in a year and a half. If in February 2023, 82% of respondents supported the course of European integration, in September 2024 - 75%.

Ukraine applied to join NATO on an accelerated basis on September 30, 2022. Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose term of office expired on May 20, 2024, said that the country was already in the alliance and met its standards.