3 September 2014
Ukraine may gain the status of major non-NATO U.S. ally by the end of the year, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said on Sept. 2, as reported by the Interfax-Ukrayina news agency. The status will enable Ukraine to significantly widen cooperation in the military hardware sphere, as well as gain the mechanism with which to buy the necessary arms. “The procedure of gaining the status of a U.S. ally has begun,” Petrenko said. “But I personally believe it’s an interim stage for Ukraine gaining full NATO membership.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Sept. 2 press conference in Moscow that Ukraine’s initiative to reject its non-bloc status and pursue NATO membership “undermines the peaceful efforts to handle the Ukrainian crisis and are being stirred by the West.” He claimed the initiative emerged just as the trilateral contact group had drawn closer the prior day in Minsk towards reaching a resolution to the “internal Ukrainian crisis.” The peace party in Kyiv is trying to advance a negotiated political resolution to the crisis, while the war party is taking steps towards undermining these efforts, “stirred up and stimulated by Washington and certain European capitals,” Lavrov said, as reported by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Zenon Zawada: The status of a major non-NATO U.S. ally is a realistic goal. Certain Ukrainians are hopeful on eventual NATO membership, which Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Aug. 29 is possible. Yet his statement was primarily intended to avoid discouraging the Ukrainians in their defense against the Russian occupation.
We don’t think it’s realistic that NATO will allow Ukraine to become a full member, the first step of which would require a membership action plan. It would make no pragmatic sense for NATO to accept an occupied country, which would require defending immediately against a nuclear power. It’s more realistic to expect eventual aid in the form of hardware and arms (in the context of the non-NATO major U.S. ally status), which would be pragmatic for Western strategic interests and military manufacturers alike.