Ukraine’s chances of joining NATO anytime soon have taken a big blow after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Slovak President Peter Pellegrini agreed on Thursday that Ukraine’s immediate accession to NATO cannot take place. After a meeting between the two heads of state, Pellegrini said,
The chancellor and I agreed that today the issue of Ukraine’s accession is not on the table, nor can it be on the table, nor is it realistic.
The same sentiments were amplified by Scholz], who told an interviewer the conflict must not escalate into a direct war between Russia and NATO—again ruling out the delivery to Ukraine of long-range Taurus missiles, which have the range to strike at targets deep within Russian territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented an “immediate invitation” to NATO accession as part of his programme for a wider settlement to the war started in February 2022 by the Russian invasion of his country. He also pleaded for additional supplies of weapons, including more powerful and destructive ones.
NATO previously declared Ukraine to be on an “irreversible” path to membership, but many of the allies oppose such a move during an ongoing war. According to Pellegrini, Germany does not perceive Zelensky’s plan “as a done deal.” This reinforces his account of the recent roundtable presidential meeting in Krakow of Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, where Pellegrini estimates a 50:50 ratio of opinions for or against Ukraine’s accession to NATO. “This point of the peace plan is currently controversial and unfeasible,” Pellegrini said.
A primary feature of NATO membership is that it compels all states in the alliance to come to the aid of a member country that is attacked. Accepting the membership of a country at war would be an immediate recipe for a much wider regional conflict. As Scholz later told German public broadcaster ZDF
It is important to realise that a country at war absolutely cannot become a member of NATO … Everyone knows that, there is no disagreement on this subject.
Germany is Slovakia’s key trading partner, but Scholz and Pellegrini also prioritised discussing migration as part of the latter’s state visit to Germany. The Slovak president, who assumed his role in mid-June, said that he assured Chancellor Scholz “that Slovakia will not ever be a transit country through which migrants heading to Germany will just pass freely.” Nevertheless, Pelligrini claims that his nation is preparing to receive a fresh wave of Ukrainian refugees this winter.