The NATO and European leaders who escorted Ukrainian acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington yesterday morphed their notion of security guarantees for Ukraine into a NATO-like Article 5 guarantee, but formally without NATO. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told Fox News last night that, while NATO membership for Ukraine was not discussed at the White House yesterday, NATO-like security guarantees were. “The situation is this—that the U.S. and some other countries have said that they are against NATO membership for Ukraine,” reported Reuters. “But what we are discussing here is not NATO membership; what we are discussing here is Article 5-type of security guarantees for Ukraine, and what exactly they will entail will now be more specifically discussed.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer echoed Rutte’s comment. “But your indication of security guarantees of some sort of Article 5-style guarantees—I think we could take a really important step forward today. A historic step, actually, could come out of this meeting in terms of security for Ukraine, security in Europe.”
French President Emmanuel Macron was more cautious on the Article 5 proposal, saying in an interview on Aug. 18, Monday evening: “We need to be cautious here, as Russia is a big nuclear threat … but the priority is these security guarantees.”
