Ukraine will not be ushered into Nato when President Joe Biden and leaders of the western alliance gather in Lithuania starting on Tuesday. Sweden likely won’t either, its accession is still blocked by a single member: Turkey.

For months now, negotiations have been underway that was supposed to be completed by the time the 31 nations of Nato — including Finland — meet in Vilnius, a city with a long history of Russian and Soviet domination.

The fact that none of this has been settled yet, even as frantic talks continue among the alliance, underscores how the Nato unity that Biden celebrates at every turn is getting harder to sustain as the war goes on.

The alliance works by consensus, increasingly infuriating its larger members, who supply much of the budget and heavy firepower. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has spent the past week hopping between Nato capitals to drum up support, has threatened to skip the event if members do not make significant progress on forging a clear commitment for how, and when, it will be folded into the western alliance.

Zelensky has attended meetings critical to continued aid in battling Russia, so if he misses this one, it will be visual evidence of a breach.

In an interview broadcast on CNN on Sunday, Biden said of Ukraine, “I don’t think it’s ready for membership in Nato.” He then acknowledged a longstanding, deeper fear: That admitting Ukraine now, given Nato’s commitment to collective defence, would assure that “we are at war with Russia”. That’s an argument the President has been making for 15 months.

Germany agrees with Biden, but several former Soviet bloc nations now in Nato disagree, saying that Ukraine would bring one of the strongest and most battle-tested nations in Europe into the alliance.

New York Times News Service