Polish foreign minister says imminent Ukraine NATO membership unlikely

By Jo Harper

WARSAW (AA) – Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO until the security guarantees issue is resolved, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita published on Friday.

“The matter is complicated. It depends on what you mean by sending an invitation. When we invited Sweden and Finland (into NATO), we also announced this meant that (security) guarantees already applied to them, so as not to create a transitional period.

"If you invite Ukraine with such security guarantees, it would be an invitation to go to war with Russia. I doubt that public opinion in most European countries, including Poland, is ready for this,” he said.

At July's NATO summit, the issue of Ukraine's membership in the alliance will be discussed. “As far as I know, there are no plans to issue an invitation,” Sikorski noted.

He did not specify how many NATO country troops were already in Ukraine or which countries they came from.

On Feb. 26, Sikorski said the presence of NATO military in Ukraine "was not unthinkable," and praised French President Emmanuel Macron’s stated desire to send Western troops to Ukraine.

A recently leaked German recording showed that UK soldiers were already in Kyiv, assisting Ukrainian troops in firing long-range Storm Shadow missiles.