At the upcoming NATO summit, Ukraine will be told that it is too corrupt to join the Alliance – The Telegraph

NATO member countries are hesitant to invite Ukraine to join the alliance due to widespread corruption in the country. At the upcoming NATO summit in Washington, Ukraine will be told that it is too corrupt to join the Alliance.

This information was reported by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, citing a senior State Department official.

The alliance will demand “additional steps” from Kyiv before membership talks can advance, according to the senior U.S. State Department official.

“Ukraine will be told that it is currently too corrupt to join NATO. We must take a step back and highly commend everything Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the past two years. As they continue to implement these reforms, we want to praise them and discuss additional steps that need to be taken, especially in the area of anti-corruption. This is a priority topic for many of us,” said the unnamed representative of the American foreign policy department.

This position will be outlined in a written NATO communiqué to be signed at the alliance’s annual summit, which will take place from July 9 to 11.

In September 2022, Ukraine applied for accelerated membership in the North Atlantic Alliance. On July 11, 2023, NATO issued a final statement at the Vilnius summit, expressing confidence that Ukraine’s future lies in the alliance, though no specific timeframe for admission was mentioned.