WASHINGTON \u2014 President Joe Biden and fellow leaders of NATO will come together next week extolling their remarkable unity backing Ukraine in its war with Russia. But serious differences over expansion of the transatlantic alliance threaten to disrupt the harmony and turn the annual summit on its head.<\/p>\n
Cohesion among the North Atlantic Treaty Organization\u2019s members has also been jeopardized by the war having become a seemingly interminable slog. Even Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said a long-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian invaders is not going as well as he hoped.<\/p>\n
NATO\u2019s gathering in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius will focus world leaders on how to help nonmember Ukraine, including what kind of military aid to provide and what a longer-term security arrangement should look like \u2014 whether or not it includes future membership in the alliance. The summit comes in the wake of an aborted mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin by the paramilitary Wagner Group, which leaders are still analyzing.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll eyes will be on Vilnius to see what the so-called Ukraine package will look like,\u201d said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who specializes in Europe.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has already spent or pledged $75 billion to shore up the Ukrainian military and state, and has authorized allies to send their U.S.-produced fighter jets into the battlefield. Biden has coaxed other European nations to pony up for the war effort, including convincing Germany to give lethal weaponry to a foreign land for the first time since World War II.<\/p>\n
Aides say the president hopes the Vilnius summit will showcase his efforts to rebuild international partnerships that were damaged under the previous administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see the NATO allies really recommitting to the basic proposition: As long as it takes,\u201d Jake Sullivan, Biden\u2019s national security adviser, told a small group of reporters Friday. \u201cThis will be an opportunity to really refresh the unity and the zeal that we have displayed all the way through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden will inevitably be forced to combat criticism from some Republicans \u2014 including a couple of presidential candidates \u2014 who have dismissed the importance of the Ukraine fight. They hope to galvanize a simmering impatience among segments of the public who may be tiring of the expensive war. But Sullivan says the administration remains confident that it has bipartisan support \u2014 and that of the American public \u2014 for a war it has characterized as crucial to U.S. national security and the world\u2019s rules of fair play.<\/p>\n
It will be a struggle for summit participants to craft language that would guarantee Ukraine\u2019s security in the coming months and years, even after the war ends. The country wants to join NATO, but that prospect is not likely while the war rages.<\/p>\n
Foreign policy analysts instead expect NATO to lay out a series of long-term security guarantees and commitments to Ukraine\u2019s self-defense on the sidelines of the summit until a path for membership becomes more clear. Biden has called it an \u201cIsrael-like\u201d understanding, which would commit a steady, open-ended flow of aid so the country can plan a long-term security strategy.<\/p>\n
Last week, 46 foreign policy experts including Francis Fukuyama and former U.S. Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., penned an open letter in Politico Magazine calling on the alliance to use the summit to explicitly state support for Kyiv\u2019s victory and pursuit of territorial integrity according to its 1991 borders, and to chart a course for Ukraine\u2019s NATO membership \u201cat the earliest achievable date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who was among the signatories, said the more cautious approach by the administration and some European allies has overshadowed \u201crecognition of the dangers and the opportunities of the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Vilnius could be a historic summit, Herbst said he doesn\u2019t expect the alliance to rise to the occasion because of continued reticence to provoke a nuclear-armed Putin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is, even as the administration has recognized that a Putin victory in Ukraine would be disastrous, they have been held back by their own timidity in pursuing a robust policy that would achieve the Ukrainian victory,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Also on the agenda in Vilnius is Sweden\u2019s aspiration to become a NATO member.<\/p>\n
After Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the historically neutral countries of Finland and Sweden declared they wanted to join NATO. Finland was quickly admitted, but Sweden stumbled over Turkey\u2019s objections to what Ankara has said is a Swedish tolerance of Kurdish militants.<\/p>\n
Admission to the alliance has to be unanimous, giving Turkey outsize power to block a nation like Sweden. The Nordic democracy has taken several steps in hopes of appeasing Ankara, including the extradition of a Kurdish activist wanted by Turkey and a tightening of domestic terrorism laws.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweden has gone as far as it can,\u201d said Heather Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund in Washington. Yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to refuse Sweden\u2019s entry, dashing U.S. hopes that the matter would be settled before the Vilnius meeting.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s obstinance is infuriating to many U.S. and European officials, some of whom have gone so far as to question the validity of Ankara\u2019s NATO membership given the increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic policies employed by Erdogan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a real failure for the [NATO] alliance if it\u2019s not able to get Sweden over the goal line here, and it\u2019s a failure because it\u2019s being held up by one member: Turkey,\u201d said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe and Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cThe alliance thus far has played very nice with Turkey. … But now the rubber is sort of hitting the road here, and it really calls into question whether this is an alliance that Turkey belongs to and shares the values of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sullivan reiterated that the U.S. is certain Sweden will be admitted to NATO sooner rather than later. One thing Erdogan desperately wants is to purchase F-16 fighter jets from the U.S. Congress has been holding up the sale citing various issues with Turkey.<\/p>\n
In advance of the NATO meeting, Zelenskyy made a rapid-fire series of stops in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.<\/p>\n
In Bratislava, the Slovakian capital, Zelenskyy again voiced Kyiv\u2019s hopes for concrete steps toward Ukrainian membership in the alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is strength in unity of NATO,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy also traveled Friday to Turkey for a meeting with Erdogan. Zelenskyy said the delay over Swedish membership posed \u201ca threat to the alliance\u2019s strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
Washington has steadily ramped up the firepower of the weapons it is giving Kyiv. Ukraine\u2019s critical need for ammunition has prompted U.S. officials to agree to supply it with cluster bombs, a controversial weapon banned in many parts of the world because of a tendency to harm civilians.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials are aware that they will take flak at the NATO summit for the decision, which Sullivan said was not taken lightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cUkraine needs the bullets so that it is not overrun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In pleading for more weaponry, Ukrainian officials have long cited Russia\u2019s superiority in artillery and heavy tanks, a crucial impediment as the counteroffensive gathers momentum, and have welcomed any additions to the nation\u2019s arsenal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of weapons matters,\u201d Mykhailo Podolyak, a key Zelenskyy adviser, wrote on Twitter Friday, describing the war as a struggle between lawlessness and international law. \u201cSo, weapons, more weapons, and more weapons, including cluster munitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Saturday marking the 500th day of the Russian invasion, Ukraine has made clear its frustration with the notion that the closely watched counteroffensive, which began last month, would yield swift and sweeping gains.<\/p>\n
Its forces have been moving against deeply entrenched Russian troops along a front line stretching hundreds of miles, capturing territory mainly in small increments, with progress often measured in yards rather than miles.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Ukraine said its troops had advanced by more than half a mile near the eastern city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russia in May.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are elements of the counteroffensive taking place, but not a decisive battle,\u201d said Natalia Humeniuk, a military spokeswoman for Ukraine\u2019s southern command in Odesa.<\/p>\n
She said Ukraine was still inflicting losses on Russia that would eventually make it difficult for its troops to defend territory they seized earlier in the 16-month-old invasion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe enemy is losing combat forces, they are losing warehouses and supply sites, they are losing logistics routes,\u201d Humeniuk said.<\/p>\n
But, she cautioned, not all battlefield activity by Ukraine will translate to immediate and visible territorial gains.<\/p>\n
That may not be what NATO members in Vilnius want to hear.<\/p>\n
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(King reported from Odesa, Ukraine.)<\/p>\n
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