At the summit in Vilnius on July 11-12, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda asked the leaders of NATO member states to show more courage in solving the issue of Ukraine’s future accession to the North Atlantic Alliance, stressing that Moscow will take any possible caution because of weakness on the part of the West, Reuters reports. .

In an interview given to a British press agency, the head of state of Lithuania advised NATO allies to ignore fears that Ukraine’s accession to NATO would be a challenge to Russia, which invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

“We must not hesitate to take bolder decisions, because otherwise the Putin regime will decide that the Western allies are too weak, that they need to be cornered, and then they capitulate,” Nauseda said, as quoted by Agerpres.

Ukraine is putting pressure on NATO so that Kyiv receives a guarantee of joining the Alliance at the summit in Vilnius next week, as soon as the war with Russia ends.

States such as the US and Germany, however, are much more cautious, fearing to bring NATO closer to an active war with Russia, which saw the Alliance’s expansion as proof of the West’s hostility to Moscow.

Gitanas Nauseda told Reuters that at the July 11-12 summit, Ukraine could be promised that after the war, its accession to NATO would happen faster, and the country would continue to receive military support from the West in the conflict against Russia.

“We all understand that now, at the height of the war, Ukraine cannot immediately join NATO. We understand it, Ukrainians understand it. But we must create procedures, see how we will act so that there is no time to lose if the war ends and the victory is on the Ukrainian side,” the Lithuanian president explained.

He testified that he expects his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, to attend the summit in Vilnius, despite the fact that the latter said that there is “no point” in going there if Kyiv does not receive a “signal” at this meeting: “I hope that he will be here and that he will play an important role in decision-making in Vilnius.”

On the other hand, Nauseda assessed that the possibility of Sweden’s acceptance into NATO at next week’s high-level meeting is becoming “difficult” and that the Nordic country’s chances of joining the Alliance are diminishing every day.

After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden applied to join NATO, but Turkey and Hungary blocked the ratification process.

In the spring of this year, another northern country – Finland – became a full member of the North Atlantic Alliance.

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