Macron Backs Ukraine’s NATO Membership and Calls for New Security Framework

Macron insists on Ukraine’s accession to NATO

French President Emmanuel Macron has stated that Ukraine should become a member of NATO. He called on European countries to define the continent’s future security architecture and to agree on the role of the US in ensuring it.

Photo: Hannah McKay/Pool Photo via AP

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“Our aim is clear: to ensure a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, and then to continue working with everyone to strengthen the common security framework in Europe,” Macron wrote on the social media platform X.

The French president invited Europeans to discuss their vision for a post-war security system and what specific commitments they expect from Washington. In this context, he spoke in favour of Ukraine’s membership of the North Atlantic Alliance.

Macron’s statement came against the backdrop of discussions on possible conditions for ending the war. The day before, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that the US had, for the first time, raised the issue of the country’s possible accession to NATO in exchange for the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donbas. According to him, if Washington were to officially propose such an option and it were supported by other members of the alliance, Kyiv would put the matter to public debate and a referendum.

According to RBC, Russia is categorically opposed to Ukraine’s NATO membership, viewing the alliance’s expansion towards its borders as a threat to national security. President Vladimir Putin has previously stated that Kyiv’s refusal to join the alliance must be one of the conditions for a ceasefire and the start of negotiations.

Among other conditions, Moscow cites the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the entire territory of the DPR, the LPR, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions within their administrative boundaries.

The Russian authorities also claim that in the early 1990s, during negotiations on German reunification, Moscow received verbal assurances from Western countries that NATO would not expand eastwards. The Kremlin regards subsequent waves of the alliance’s expansion as a breach of these agreements.

Western representatives deny the existence of such commitments. In 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the then NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated that the West had never promised Russia that it would refrain from further expansion of the alliance.

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