Ukrainians’ complicated embrace of NATO

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Victor Yuschenko , President of Ukraine during the 2008 Bucharest Summit. Photo: Courtesy of NATO

US President George W. Bush and USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 announced the end of the Cold War during a meeting in Malta. Then the countries of the socialist camp, one after another, began a return to the principles of democracy and the rule of law. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union also put an end to the Warsaw Pact.

Thus, it seemed that NATO, as a political-military alliance, would also fade into history, or somehow change its functions. However, the countries of Central Europe, which still recalled their experiences with Moscow, declared integration into NATO and the European Community a key priority in their foreign policy. To achieve this goal, Poland, Czechoslovakia (since 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and Hungary created a regional association – the Visegrád Group. The Kremlin tried to protest against the future expansion of the Alliance to the East, but to no avail. The strategy for future cooperation between the Alliance and the countries of the former socialist camp was adopted during NATO’s summit in Rome in 1991. To implement such cooperation, it was decided to create a North Atlantic Cooperation Council, which became a platform for dialogue between NATO and partner countries.

Quite different were the prospects for future cooperation with the former post-Soviet republics, including Ukraine. In the first period after the collapse of the USSR, Brussels and Washington saw much of Eastern Europe through “Moscow glasses”. In other words, almost all events in the former Soviet republics were interpreted from the point of view of the old metropole. Even most respected news media had their representative offices only in the Russian Federation. Therefore, the formation of Ukraine as an independent state was a complex process that was difficult for many westerners to fully understand. This complexity has ultimately played a role in shaping Ukraine’s engagement with the West, including NATO.

S: First steps towards NATO

From the beginning of Ukraine’s independence, most international experts predicted the imminent demise of Ukrainian statehood. Samuel Huntington in his work The Clash of Civilizations predicted Ukraine’s rapid split into two parts, western and eastern, and even a Russian-Ukrainian war. Unfortunately, he was not mistaken about future conflict. However, it is the multiculturalism of Ukraine that is its advantage and disadvantage at the same time. After independence, both the Ukrainian state and society found themselves at a crossroads, hotly debating whether to draw themselves closer to the western powers of NATO and the EU who were previously adversaries. Even though cooperation with the European Community did not cause resistance at the beginning, heated debates on cooperation with NATO continued not only within the walls of the parliament, but also within crowded cafes and university hallways. Most still remember the Soviet media narratives about NATO as an aggressive and imperialist bloc. However, the military leadership of the newly created Armed Forces of Ukraine was very clearly aware of the need to establish cooperation with NATO and the further prospect of integration into this political-military alliance.

At the beginning of the formation of Ukrainian statehood in 1991, illusions reigned among the Ukrainian establishment that no one would attack the country. Thus, the focus was instead on disarmament while cooperation with NATO was far from people’s minds. Favourable conditions for establishing cooperation with the Alliance were challenged by the situation surrounding the Black Sea Fleet of the former Soviet Union in Crimea. It was here that Russia once again demonstrated its aggressive stance and Ukraine felt that there was no one to rely on in the international arena. Then President Leonid Kravchuk and his successor Leonid Kuchma launched an active policy of rapprochement and cooperation with NATO. This was also facilitated by a change in the geopolitical situation in the region. After the forceful dissolution of the Russian parliament in 1993 and peaceful settlement of the Donbas miners’ strike in Ukraine, it was Kyiv that was starting to be seen by Washington and western allies as a key partner in the region, not just Moscow. In February 1994, Ukraine joined the NATO Partnership for Peace programme, which offers cooperation with non-NATO partners. The First Chechen War unleashed by the Russian Federation became another factor which may have pushed the Ukrainian leadership closer to NATO, after witnessing Russia’s brutal tactics.

A new level

In 1997, relations between Ukraine and NATO reached a new level – a charter on a distinctive partnership was concluded and signed. The practical consequence of this was the creation of a special NATO-Ukraine Commission. The document also states that the Alliance is open to accepting new members, referring to Article 10 of the Washington Treaty. The Charter clearly defined the principles on which cooperation between both parties would be built and outlined areas of future cooperation. It also detailed practical mechanisms through which consultations and cooperation would take place.

One of the last European crises in the 20th century was the war in Kosovo. The growing conflict between Belgrade and Pristina had all the signs of a new ethnic cleansing and a war between the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians. In order to prevent escalation and having received a UN mandate to conduct a peacekeeping operation in 1999, NATO began bombing military facilities on Serbian territory, after all diplomatic opportunities were exhausted. In Ukraine, most of the media covered these events in a similar way to Soviet ideological dogmas about an aggressive NATO bloc that interferes in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. Thus, without a full sense of the cause-and-effect relationships that led UN-backed peacekeepers to the point of military involvement, the majority of Ukrainian society condemned this mission. However, the Ukrainian political leadership, led by Kuchma, viewed the conflict differently. Kuchma sent Ukrainian forces into a post-conflict peacekeeping mission together with Polish soldiers on the NATO side, as part of the KFOR unit. Thus started today’s Polish-Ukrainian military cooperation and the beginnings of a joint Polish-Ukrainian battalion.

At the NATO Washington summit also in 1999, a Membership Action Plan was developed and adopted. The key criteria included military and technical standards; socio-economic (standards of living among the population, zero tolerance for corruption, etc.); and socio-political standards within the country (freedom of speech, rule of law, free and democratic elections, etc.). There was a complete consensus in society and among experts at that time that Ukraine did not meet these conditions. At the same time, the vast majority of Ukrainians were against the country’s accession to NATO. In 1999 presidential elections were held in Ukraine, as a result of which Kuchma was re-elected for a second term. The president and his entourage subsequently decided to move towards European and Euro-Atlantic integration. But in 2000 there were significant events that led to the temporary isolation of the Ukrainian establishment in the West.

Between Russia and the West

Changes in Russia’s political and state leadership have significantly affected relations between Moscow, Kyiv and Brussels. The new Russian President Vladimir Putin initially adopted pragmatism in his foreign policy. One of the priorities of this approach already was to prevent any integration of Ukraine into western structures. The success of this policy was facilitated by the disappearance, and later as it turned out the murder, of journalist Georgiy Gongadze and the subsequent “tape scandal”. This led to the first mass protests throughout Ukraine. The scandal further weakened the Ukrainian leadership on the international stage and led, accordingly, to a cooling of relations between Ukraine and the West. The situation only worsened when news broke that Ukraine’s defence industry was supplying Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with “Kolchuga” radar systems, which are able to detect advanced stealth technologies.

Around this time, Kyiv initiated a policy of balance between Moscow and the West. As international observers in Ukraine and the Russian Federation aptly emphasised, the presidents of both countries (Kuchma and Putin) met 18 times during 2002 alone. A draft agreement on the Single Economic Space between Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan was also being prepared. This geopolitical project was later transformed into the Russian-led customs union, under the auspices of the Kremlin. In the same year, another NATO summit was held in Prague. Due to the aforementioned scandals, Kuchma was not a welcome guest on the side lines of the event. Yet he still went to the summit. The president of the United States and the prime minister of the United Kingdom did not want to sit next to the odious Ukrainian president, so guests were seated according to the French alphabet, and not English, as usual. Thanks to this, Kuchma was at the end of the table during the summit. 

Mistakenly believing that the Ukrainian political leadership was completely isolated in the West, Putin made his first attempts to capture Crimea by starting the construction of a so-called dam from the Taman Peninsula (the territory of the Russian Federation) to the island of Kosa Tuzla (territory of Ukraine). The attempt was made in 2003. In response, Kuchma decided to return to the policy of Euro-Atlantic integration, recalling the 2002 Strategy of Ukraine for NATO, which provided for deepening and expanding cooperation with the Alliance. Guided by this document, Ukraine sent a contingent of soldiers to the Polish zone of responsibility in the peacekeeping mission in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

One of the joint Ukrainian-American programmes within the framework of NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” was the US Navy’s Sea Breeze exercises, which have been held since 1997, mainly in Ukrainian territorial waters in the Black Sea. Russia was not invited to partake in these exercises. The last Sea Breeze operation during Kuchma’s presidency took place in 2002 with the participation of three warships of the Naval Forces of Ukraine, as well as the American destroyer Roosevelt in the Mediterranean. Such exercises resumed during the presidential term of Viktor Yushchenko in 2007 and took place in the Mykolaiv and Odesa regions. In 2008 and 2009, the exercises were accompanied by protest actions in Crimea and Odesa. Protests were carried out by the pro-Russian forces of the Party of Regions, the Communist Party and other marginal entities, including Russkoye yedinstvo and a number of others.

At the same time, supporters of Ukraine’s accession to NATO became more active. A number of events were organised by civil society organisations and with the financial support of western partners under the general name “NATO Academy”. This involved the participation of representatives from the embassies of NATO members, experts from Ukraine and Denmark and public activists. Similar events were held by local activists in the regions of Ukraine with the aim of promoting Ukraine’s accession to NATO.

For many, Russia’s aggression against Georgia in 2008 only emphasised the need for the Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine. However, public sentiment continued to remain generally anti-western, especially in the densely populated eastern and southern regions of the country. This was also one of the reasons why France and Germany refused to provide Ukraine with an Action Plan for NATO membership during the Bucharest summit in 2008. However, the event did confirm that the door for Ukraine remained open. Then President Viktor Yushchenko, returning from Bucharest on a plane, signed decrees on the immediate dismissal of ambassadors in Berlin and Paris.

From Yanukovych to Zelenskyy

After the victory of Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential elections and the creeping usurpation of power, Ukraine declared itself to be a non-aligned or neutral nation. This announcement was a clear rejection of further Euro-Atlantic integration. In the same year, the infamous Kharkiv Pact was signed on the extension of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s presence in Crimea for another 25 years until 2042 (according to previous agreements, the Russian fleet was supposed to leave Crimea in 2017). Despite such moves, cooperation with NATO did continue. Further joint exercises and other projects were regularly taking place. However, this did not add much credibility to the new Ukrainian government, or help its image among western partners.

A clear turning point was the issue of signing the Association Agreement with the European Union, which Yanukovych refused to sign at the last minute during the Vilnius summit in 2013. This refusal was met with mass protests throughout Ukraine, which ultimately led to the shameful flight of Yanukovych and his associates to Russia in 2014. These events were followed by Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas. The aggressive actions of the Russian Federation forced opponents of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration to reconsider their position. While in 2013 only 18 per cent of respondents were in favour of joining NATO, by 2014 that number rose to 47.8 per cent. At the same time, around 30 per cent of Ukrainians remained opposed to Euro-Atlantic integration. The new president, Petro Poroshenko, led the charge to amend the constitution to include Ukraine’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th 2022, public sentiment in Ukraine finally changed in favour of joining NATO. According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, as of May 2023, the level of support is now at a record high of 90 per cent. Despite this public consensus, which was reached at the cost of tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Ukrainian lives, the Ukrainian leadership, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the first part of the full-scale Russian aggression, stubbornly searched for an alternative to NATO regarding security guarantees for Ukraine in the future. Only after six months of fruitless work did Zelenskyy’s team finally realise that the best security guarantee is full NATO membership.

The Ukrainian authorities should also realise that the military component is important for NATO, but not the main focus. While the Ukrainian military on the battlefield has already proved itself worthy of joining the Alliance, issues such as democracy, freedom of speech, transparency, judicial reform, a real market economy and the complete de-oligarchisation of public life are no less important for Ukraine itself and for NATO. Without success in associated reforms, Ukraine is doomed to remain in the “waiting room” for full membership in NATO and the EU for years or even decades.

Ukraine has already spent decades searching for its identity. Today, amidst full-scale war, the country is still at the stage of working out its security values. As a result, it cannot move to consider its development values. This is a terrible price to pay for a long farewell to the Soviet Union. At the same time, this moment is a chance to accelerate anti-corruption reforms, assert the rule of law, protect freedom of speech and ensure transparent democratic procedures in social and political life. The last NATO summit confirmed all this, as the final communiqué stated that Ukraine would become a full member of the Alliance.

Yet according to US President Joe Biden, this path will be long. Recently during the NATO summit in Vilnius, the first meeting of the newly established NATO-Ukraine Council took place (instead of the commission, which has been working since 1997). The allies announced then the provision of another package of assistance for Ukraine in the war with Russia. Therefore, both sides will continue to work hard in order to achieve the set goals, which will ultimately result in the final accession of Ukraine to NATO.

Oleksii Lionchuk graduated with a master’s degree in history from Rivne State University of Humanities. For seven years he worked as a teacher of history, philosophy and political science in primary and postgraduate schools in Ukraine. Since 2014, he has been a PhD student at the Institute of History at the Jagiellonian University (Poland).

NATO, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko