On its long way to NATO’s membership, Ukraine still truly needs to go on with its painful reforms.
But also, the country’s future in the 30-nation alliance in many ways demands political decisions of all member states, as guests of Kyiv Post webinar “NATO-Ukraine relations: The way forward” concluded on Sept. 14.
Ukraine has been in touch with the alliance since its very inception as an independent state, and it has already spent years trying to keep up with its benchmarks.
See the photo gallery from the event
However, as Vineta Kleine, director of the NATO Information and Documentation Centre in Ukraine asserted, Kyiv still has a long to-do list in terms of civilian democratic oversight, judicial reform, and anti-corruption.
“There are still several areas where Ukraine could go forward,” the official told during the discussion when asked by Brian Bonner, the Kyiv Post chief editor.
“The current system of democratic control and oversight of the security and defense system needs to be modified in order to align with NATO principles and standards. Another thing where should go forward is the prioritization and clear articulation of strategic goals across the defense sector.”
Brian Bonner chief editor of the Kyiv Post, speaks during the Kyiv Post webinar “Ukraine-NATO relations: The way forward” on Sep. 14, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Moreover, according to Glen Grant, the retired British Army officer and authoritative expert on Ukraine’s defense sector, in many ways, Kyiv and NATO end up being on different pages when it comes to what should be the reform’s result.
“NATO talks one language and senior Ukrainian people talk another language, in the military and the defense system,” Grant said.
“They are still talking and still living to a large degree in the post-Communist way of thinking. The (Ukrainian) Ministry of Defense… was never designed as a ministry of defense, and it is still isn’t a ministry of defense… It was never built as a managing management system.
“A large amount of the things that are failures in reform and simply failures in management. Either because people don’t know how to do it, or in many cases, they are simply don’t know what they are talking about, or they are contradictory-thinking.”
For instance, it is common for Ukraine’s defense community to demand that the Ministry of Defense be headed by a military general, in the logic of Soviet tradition. However, such demands are inconsistent with modern, Western principles of civilian control of the military. And complications of this kind often hog-tie the Ukrainian reform, according to Grant.
Besides, as experts admitted, not all provisions clearly depend on how successful Ukraine is. The issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO also depends a lot on decisions within the very alliance, according to Kurt Volker, former United States special pepresentative on Ukraine.
“Ukraine has done a lot and it needs to do more,” Volker told during the discussion.
“But that’s not really the point… But the real issue here is politics. NATO makes decisions by consensus. That is to say: all of the member states need to agree in order to take a decision… But we know there are a number of European countries — I won’t name names — that worry that this would be provocative for Russia. They are worried that it could be taking the alliance into an ongoing conflict, such as we have in Donbas.
“They are worried that Ukraine is not sufficiently reformed, there’s too much corruption, that it would be damaging to NATO to bring Ukraine in. So we have a problem in NATO in reaching consensus to invite Ukraine.”
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, ex-minister of defense in Ukraine, speaks during the Kyiv Post webinar “Ukraine-NATO relations: The way forward” on Sep. 14, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
But nonetheless, admitting Ukraine would be of strategic importance to both Europe and the U.S., as Volker added.
Andriy Zahorodnuyk, Ukraine’s defense minister in 2019-2020, noted that with time some NATO nations tend to get softer towards Kyiv. This was clearly seen following NATO’s 2021 summit and the alliance communique on encouraging Ukraine to move on with its aspirations towards membership.
“Because from my personal experience, I spoke to a few leaders of states and ministries of defense,” Zahorodnuyk said. “And some countries were not seeing Ukraine among (potential members), a couple of years ago, even a year ago. The fact that they all issued and signed this communique (was a good sign), even though there was no timeline (of Ukraine joining NATO).”
Moreover, NATO still has very powerful leverage for helping Kyiv boost its reforms — and it is similar to the one used very effecitvely in terms of Ukraine’s movement to the visa-free regime with the European Union, according to Olena Halushka, a member of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine.
“Obviously, a Membership Action Plan will be a very helpful and good tool of to serve this goal,” the activist said. “But since not all NATO allies are ready to provide us with such an instrument…we need to think about another solution that could break the vicious circle, in which NATO-Ukraine political relation are stuck in.”
Vineta Kleine, the director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine, speaks during the Kyiv Post webinar “Ukraine-NATO relations: The way forward” on Sept. 14, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
So the Ukrainian anti-corruption community has come to a proposition to create a form of NATO reforms map.
“This should be a very ambitious, a very clear and prioritized list of the reforms that meet the most resistance among political elites and that fall under the criteria of reforms of rule of law in Ukraine. Such as a real judicial reform, the real SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) reform,” Halushka said.
“Such a plan would not contain NATO commitments to any clear timelines with regards to when it will have to move to the next integration phase But its implementation should prepare Ukraine to join NATO when a window of opportunity will be open.”
