NATO races to design plan for Ukraine

WASHINGTON/KYIV — NATO members are racing to complete a plan to provide long-term support to Ukraine, but are wrestling with how best to assure the country's security until it can join the military alliance, US and European officials have said.

This came as African leaders arrived in Ukraine on Friday in a bid to broker peace between Kyiv and Moscow.

Four presidents and three representatives were due to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv before heading to Saint Petersburg on Saturday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"It is at times of escalated conflict that a search for peace must be equally accelerated," South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement.

He was joined by Senegal's President Macky Sall, Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema and Comoros President Azali Assoumani, who currently heads the African Union.

The high-profile diplomatic team hopes to bring to the table the voice of a continent that has been badly hit by rising grain prices and the wider impact on global trade due to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Analysts said it is hoped the mediation effort could win some concessions from the Kremlin ahead of a Russia-Africa summit next month, Agence France-Presse commented.

With four weeks to go until a NATO summit in Vilnius that is expected to approve the plan, there is agreement that Ukraine cannot join the alliance while fighting is still underway with Russian forces, a position accepted in early June by Zelensky after months of pleading for speedy admission.

Alliance members are close to agreeing incremental steps to strengthen ties with Ukraine, including upgrading how NATO and Kyiv cooperate and a multiyear program to help Ukraine bring its security forces to NATO operational and technical standards, according to officials.

The allies have yet to resolve differences over how to address Ukraine's desire for membership, which has been governed by a vague 2008 declaration that it will join the organization without setting out how or when.

US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told reporters this week that members are still discussing how to respond to the Kyiv government's membership aspirations.

A senior alliance source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is "a hard search on to find a mechanism that brings Ukraine closer to NATO without taking them into NATO".

Softer term

Western governments such as the United States and Germany are wary of moves they fear could take the alliance closer to entering an active conflict with Russia, which has long seen NATO's expansion as evidence of hostility.

Asked on June 2 about Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:"It would be a potential problem for many, many years."

With most military analysts predicting years of fighting, popular support for Ukraine in the West might fade over that time and the 2024 US election could yield an administration less willing to spend money on the conflict.

Hanging over the deliberations is the question of whether alliance members can show unity by forging agreements ahead of the July 11-12 summit in the Lithuanian capital. Failing to do so would hand Moscow a political gain, The Associated Press commented.

"Nobody wants to take a risk of disunity being displayed openly," a senior European diplomat said.

US officials prefer the softer term "security commitments". They declined to define what those commitments would be, but said they are working on a mechanism that would allow individual countries to provide long-term military aid to Kyiv.

Agencies - Xinhua