The Moment of Truth for Putin’s NATO Nightmare Is Here

KYIV—Twenty-four-year-old Vova Prostokyshin was smoking a cigarette in his wheelchair on Kyiv’s crowded central street, Khreschatyk, on Saturday afternoon. Despite a litany of financial problems and physical ailments—he had lost both of his legs in an explosion while fighting in Bakhmut in May—he refused handouts from passersby and told The Daily Beast there was only one thing on his mind.

“I don’t need anything. But my pobratims (brothers) need a lot of things for our victory, and I just hope that the United States and NATO will help us to defend Ukraine,” he said, referring to his hopes for the NATO summit in Vilnius, which begins Tuesday.

Like the vast majority of Ukrainians, Prostokyshin is hoping that the summit in the Lithuanian capital will pave the way for Ukraine’s membership in the alliance. Speaking to The Daily Beast, he said that he believed that somewhere in Washington or Brussels there were decisionmakers who understood the scale of the suffering that he, his young wife, and his friends were going through.

But is Prostokyshin’s hope—which is shared by a whopping 89 percent of Ukrainian citizens—a pipe dream?

The executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, Daria Kaleniuk, has been traveling to NATO member countries since the early days of the invasion. She has met with dozens of top officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to convey a simple message: “There is only one signal that Ukraine is waiting for from NATO: the invitation for the membership,” Kaleniuk told The Daily Beast in an interview this week.

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“Unlike Israel, we don’t have nuclear weapons; unlike Korea we don’t have U.S. military bases on the ground.” Kaleniuk said. “The West is afraid of war with Russia, they push us into the Minsk-3 agreement with Moscow—but that would still mean we’d be at war with Russia in another two or three years,” she predicted. “This is a matter of cost and, according to our calculation, it would be cheaper to win this war now with the hands of Ukrainians.”

The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, has assured Ukrainians that this summit will be different from the one that took place in Bucharest in 2008, when Ukraine was given a polite “no” on the question of membership in the alliance. “In the communique we will be addressing Ukraine’s membership aspiration and that is something that NATO allies continue to work on, but it is not just restating Bucharest—it will look different.”

The 2008 summit is regarded as a missed opportunity by many Ukrainians, including Sevgil Musayeva, the editor-in-chief of Ukraine’s leading media outlet, Ukrainska Pravda.

“We had a sad experience with NATO at the Bucharest summit, when they told us we are not wanted,” Musayeva told The Daily Beast. “Now, the West is dealing with a war in Europe and we are the ones fighting for the entire continent. The problem is that the United States does not want to fight a war with Russia, so nobody seems to know what signal to give us.”

The week of the summit coincides with a new flurry of hostile threats from the Kremlin. The deputy head of Russia’s security council, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, has threatened to attack major power plants in Ukraine—including the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant—in retaliation for what Russians claim were NATO missiles used to attack Russia’s Smolensk nuclear plant this month.

“If the attempted NATO missile attack on Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant is confirmed, then it is necessary to consider the scenario of a Russian strike on the south Ukraine nuclear power plant, Rivne nuclear power plant, and Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant, as well as nuclear facilities in eastern Europe,” Medvedev warned.

Even Ukrainian teenagers like 19-year-old Daniel—who helps manage a distribution company called Defense Ukraine, which delivers ammunition to the front lines—is watching the NATO discussions closely.

“We do everything to demonstrate we are European, we build our European Ukraine with all the same most respected values as any European country,” Daniel told The Daily Beast, adding that he is disheartened by what he views as “Western fear” of Russia hindering Ukraine’s NATO membership prospects.

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“We would like to hear from NATO when and how we join. We understand they cannot give us their uniforms and their ammunition now, but NATO members could give us a signal that we are a part of their community.”

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a public official in the Ukrainian government told The Daily Beast that Ukraine has no illusions that NATO countries will be willing to send their troops into a warzone to help defend against the Russian invasion.

“We are aware of the fact that NATO, by their mandate, cannot invite us for as long as we are at war—but this back-and-forth takes time,” the official told The Daily Beast. “And meanwhile, our soldiers die and lose limbs because weapons are supplied very slowly. At the very least they could say: ‘We will be supplying the weapons faster now.’”

For former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, there are no longer any “excuses” for NATO to beat around the bush on the question of Ukraine’s membership in the alliance.

“For years NATO leaders remained vague about the timetable of Ukraine's membership, because they did not want to provoke a Russian military response. Putin invaded anyway,” McFaul told The Daily Beast. “So that excuse can no longer be used to delay Ukraine’s NATO membership. In Vilnius, NATO members must commit to a clear path for Ukraine’s membership. The question must be framed as not whether, but when. The sooner, the better.”

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