Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he has “no doubt” that Ukraine will join NATO after the war with Russia ends.
Austin’s comments come after a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in which NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that Ukraine’s application to join the alliance will have an easier path with one procedural hurdle being removed from the process.
But Stoltenberg also did not lay out a timetable for Ukraine to join, frustrating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Austin told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a Thursday interview that Ukraine still needs to take several steps before it can join NATO, including judicial reforms. But he said he is sure Ukraine will join once the war is over.
“I have no doubt that that will happen, and we heard all the countries in the room say as much,” he said, referring to the other attendees of the NATO summit.
Ukraine formally applied for membership in the alliance last fall after Russia’s full-scale invasion earlier that year.
Stoltenberg said at the summit that relations and support between NATO and Ukraine will be strengthened, a council will be set up specifically to coordinate with the Ukrainian government and one procedural step of the application process will be removed.
Zelensky slammed the lack of a clear time frame for when Ukraine would be able to join NATO or at least formally invited to join, calling it “unprecedented and absurd.” He was later more conciliatory and praised the plan for making Ukraine’s process easier.
President Biden has said he does not believe Ukraine is “ready” to join and would not expect unanimous support for its inclusion among the current NATO members while the war continues. The White House has said adding Ukraine as a member now would likely put NATO at war with Russia.
Austin declined to provide a timeline for when Ukraine will join after the war, but he said all countries that he has witnessed are interested in “moving as quickly as possible.”
“I do believe that everyone wants Ukraine to be on board,” he said.