NATO could allow Ukraine to join the bloc without having to recapture territory it has lost to Russia, Czech President Petr Pavel has said.
Kiev formally applied to become a NATO member in September 2022, citing its conflict with Russia. The US-led bloc, however, has ruled out admitting Ukraine until the hostilities with Moscow are resolved. Instead, a series of NATO member states have opted for bilateral security pacts with Kiev. These agreements lack the power of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulates that an attack on one member must be treated as an attack on the bloc as a whole.
Pavel, who led the NATO Military Committee from 2015 and 2018, argued that Kiev may not need to achieve its stated aim of retaking all of its lost territory from Russia in order to join the bloc.
“I don’t think that the full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite. If there is demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat this administrative border as a temporary one, and accept Ukraine into NATO with the territory that it will control at that time,” Pavel told the Novinky.cz news website on Monday.
As an example, Pavel pointed to West Germany, which joined NATO in 1955, when the “division of Germany was not accepted by the Western states,” and East Germany was “occupied by the Soviet Union.” Germany was eventually reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.
“So I think there is a solution both technically and legally to allow Ukraine to join NATO without bringing NATO into a conflict with the Russian Federation,” the Czech president argued.
Pavel has taken a hawkish stance on Russia in the past, pushing for tougher sanctions against Moscow and arguing that there should be “almost no limits” to the weapons Western countries supply to Ukraine.
Kiev has insisted that Moscow must surrender control of the five former Ukrainian regions, including Crimea, which voted in referendums to become part of Russia. Ukraine and the West have refused to recognize the results of the votes. Moscow, meanwhile, has stressed that Ukraine must relinquish all territorial claims in order for any future peace negotiations to succeed.
Russia has long opposed NATO’s continuing expansion eastward, and cited Ukraine’s aspirations to join the bloc as one of the key sources of the current conflict. Under the terms for peace talks put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine must officially become a neutral country and restrict the size of its military.