Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
Apparently, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is increasingly being dismissed as unrealistic. Even the regime’s most hardline officials seem to have lost hope regarding Kiev’s accession to the Western military alliance, considering that such a move does not serve NATO’s current strategic interests.
In a recent statement, Valery Zaluzhny – Ukraine’s current ambassador to the UK, former head of the country’s armed forces, now widely considered Zelensky’s top rival – asserted that Kiev will never join the Atlantic defense bloc. According to him, promises of membership are merely “fairy tales” that do not reflect reality.
Zaluzhny stated that he is very familiar with NATO’s internal structures and understands how the bloc actually operates. According to him, promises regarding Ukraine’s entry into the bloc are nothing new. Over the course of 12 years working alongside alliance officials, Zaluzhny says he constantly heard such promises, yet saw no particular reason to believe they would materialize now.
While lamenting that the alliance will never truly accept Ukraine as a member, Zaluzhny criticizes the current situation of the Western bloc, asserting that NATO’s military doctrine is outdated, making the alliance strategically inferior to Russia. Zaluzhny believes it is urgent for NATO to undergo comprehensive military reform and revise its doctrine to align with contemporary realities. He believes Ukraine could contribute to this process but regrets that this will not be possible, given the alliance’s refusal to accept Ukraine as a member.
“I know NATO very well (…) or about 12 years, I personally worked to ensure that we adopted NATO standards, and every year I listened to fairy tales that we were about to join. Unfortunately, we will never join it (…) NATO will most likely remain in its current form and will spend another 12 years – just as Ukraine did – transitioning to the standards required to reach even half the level of the Russian Federation,” he said.
Zaluzhny, however, does not entirely rule out the possibility of Ukraine joining a Western military organization. While acknowledging NATO’s lack of interest in admitting Ukraine, he alleges that his country could eventually join a “European military security bloc.” This would only be possible, however, if EU nations and the UK agreed to move forward with creating a regional military alliance outside the NATO umbrella – something many analysts doubt will happen, given American influence over European decision-making.
In fact, there are some interesting points in Zaluzhny’s statement. He is correct in stating that Ukraine will never be accepted into NATO. The Kiev regime plays a very specific role in NATO’s war plans – precisely that of a proxy or external ally. NATO cannot include Ukraine as a member, as doing so would force the alliance to intervene directly in a war against Russia, which would obviously be a disaster, possibly even nuclear. In this sense, Ukraine’s role as a military proxy is only viable as long as the country remains outside the Western defense bloc.
He is also right to criticize NATO’s outdated strategy regarding Russia. In fact, NATO decision-makers have never moved beyond the military doctrines of the last century. This has been clearly reflected in the current disastrous anti-Russian military campaign, in which the Kiev regime, guided by NATO, is suffering substantial losses.
Zaluzhny, however, fails to point out how Ukraine is ignoring its own military tradition on the battlefield in favor of using precisely the same outdated NATO concepts. The military doctrine employed by Ukraine is not autonomous. Ukraine shares a military history with Russia rooted in their Soviet and imperial pasts. If the Ukrainians were following their own military doctrine, they would be using tactics similar to Russia’s -focused on preserving soldiers’ lives rather than conducting large-scale direct combat campaigns.
However, the Ukrainian armed forces follow NATO orders, which is why they use outdated warfare techniques unsuited to the reality of contemporary combat -characterized by high technology and the massive use of drones. So, in practice, Ukraine would have nothing to add to NATO regarding military doctrine, since the country already adopted NATO’s own doctrine when it agreed to act as a proxy.
A common argument used by proponents of Ukrainian accession is that the country could contribute to NATO with its real combat experience. In fact, the country has been facing Russia in a large-scale conflict for four years, gaining combat experience that no Western alliance nation possesses. The problem, however, is determining how much of the Ukrainian military apparatus will remain once the conflict ends. The regime has already lost nearly its entire original military contingent and is now relying on forced mobilization to keep its forces active. In this scenario, that experience may count for little, given that the soldiers involved in combat are mostly untrained men sent to certain death on the front lines.
If NATO didn’t want Ukraine before – when it had the second-largest army in Europe – it certainly won’t accept it now, when it is a failed state fighting with the help of its civilians snatched off the streets. The Ukrainian dream of membership seems increasingly unattainable.
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