It was way back in 2008 that NATO boldly proclaimed that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become full-fledged members of the Alliance based on their right to determine their own political and military future – no matter what Russia or anyone else might say.

NO REAL PROGRESS FOR EITHER COUNTRY

On Monday, 13 years later, at yet another NATO summit – with Russia heavily engaged militarily in both ex-Soviet states, alliance leaders did not move on membership for either country.

Alliance leaders did endorse a harshly-worded statement condemning recent Russian actions around Ukraine, where the Kremlin recently held military exercises, including the annexed Crimea region.

“Russia’s continuing aggressive military posture, its refusal to fully comply with its obligations under the Treaty on Open Skies, its ongoing selective implementation of the Vienna Document, and its long-standing failure to implement the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, continue to undermine security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area,” a post-summit NATO communique read.

The communique specifically referred to Russia’s recent military build-up around Ukraine.

“Allies call on Russia to return to full implementation of and compliance with the letter and spirit of all of its international obligations and commitments, which is essential to rebuilding trust and confidence, military transparency and increasing predictability in the Euro-Atlantic region.  We specifically call on Russia to be open and transparent about its no-notice snap exercises, large-scale exercises and large-scale troop movements, in accordance with its Vienna Document commitments, particularly in light of its recent unprovoked and unjustified military build-up in and around Ukraine.”

KREMLIN PREVENTS ANY FURTHER MOVES TO EXPANSION

Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s strident warnings that Moscow would tolerate no talk of membership appears to have again deterred the alliance.

Neither has secured a Membership Action Plan (MAP), the first step on the road to membership. Both were encouraged to proceed with long-overdue reforms.

The summit left the issue far off on a political backburner. Leaders focused on China and how its military might be “presenting challenges” to the Alliance – and on the presence of a new U.S. president committed to NATO’s goals. Tough language was used in describing Russia as a “threat” to NATO, but the leaders’ attention was clearly focused elsewhere.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky displayed open resentment for not being invited to NATO’s Brussels summit, though Kyiv had few expectations.

“We understand the desire of the Allies to hold their own summit to discuss Trans-Atlantic unity. … To be honest, though, we don’t understand at all how a closed-format NATO summit could be held against the background of the aggressive actions by the Russian Federation…,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in the run-up to the meeting.

“How can you not invite Ukraine; how can you not find a format for Ukraine’s participation in the current summit?” he said.

Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and backed armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has been waging war on the armed proxies holding large chunks of territory in two unrecognised “people’s republics” in the country’s Donbass region.

Georgia has had no diplomatic relations with Russia since their 2008 war over the tiny unrecognised statelet of South Ossetia. Moscow later “recognised” the estimated 20,000 strong area and the more important Abkhazia region – estranged from Tbilisi since a 1992-93 war after Russia overran Georgia in a five-day war.

A few Pacific island statelets followed suit with “recognition”. So did Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega. Syria’s Bashar Assad added his name in 2019, evidently in appreciation for Moscow’s support of his government.

Putin made his stand clear in interviews days before the meeting, saying the Alliance had always been committed to targeting Moscow and its eastward creep in the post-Soviet era had left it vulnerable and all but encircled.

Any U.S. missile launched from new Poland or Romania could reach central Russia in 15 minutes as matters stood now, he said.

“Let’s imagine that Ukraine becomes a NATO member,” Putin told a television interviewer. “The flight time from, let’s say, Kharkiv and…Dnepropetrovsk to central Russia, to Moscow, will shrink to 7-10 minutes,” Putin said. “Is that a red line for us or not?” the leader asked.

He drew parallels with the deployment of missiles in Cuba in 1962, which is unacceptable to the United States.

“Somebody should think about what our reaction should be to what is essentially being proposed and discussed,” he said.

Ukrainian analyst Vitaly Portnikov said there was very clearly a desire on the part of NATO leaders and U.S. President Joe Biden to proceed with the membership plans and, ultimately, membership.

“It inevitably ends up with reluctance to move forward as regards these countries in institutional terms – a membership action plan.

“In fact, there is more than reluctance – a desire not to worsen relations with Moscow, which could try to prevent, through military force, further Euro-Atlantic integration by Georgia and Ukraine.”

Back in 2008, Georgia and its flamboyant leader Mikheil Saakashvili – a frequent whipping boy in Moscow – also received stern warnings of grave consequences – and more — about any flirtation with NATO.

This came in the form of the war that left 25,000 ethnic Georgians ethnically cleansed from South Ossetia, and Russia then recognised both it and Abkhazia.

Nonetheless, Georgia continued to be an outsized contributor to NATO missions. It also, at one point, was the biggest contributor state to the U.S. operation in Afghanistan.

Many Georgian analysts think it is high time NATO produced more than words and some limited military support.

And they are backed by public opinion – surveys consistently show 70 percent of Georgians approve of the notion of NATO membership.

However, Ukrainian support for NATO membership is patchy at the best of times – about 50 percent at the moment — even given seven years of fighting on the east and an exasperated admission by President Zelensky after being rebuffed by Putin in his calls for talks – that NATO membership was the only way to solve the problem.

“While Georgia has a majority in favour of joining NATO, it is clear that in Ukraine there is a very fragile majority subject to change,” said analyst Portnikov. “And this majority only came into being after the events of 2014.”

Some analysts, especially from Georgia, are clearly out of patience and want membership now.

“Every NATO summit that has been held over the past decade has been a test of Georgia’s patience and expectations of Tbilisi’s deserved ambition to join the Alliance formally,” said analyst Victor Kipiani.

“NATO has even established a tradition of appraising this or that form of progress in NATO-Georgia co-operation and of defining further indicators—some new, some specific and some enriched with general formulations. Similarly, it has become a solid Georgian ‘habit’ to read between the lines of these indicators and any promises made and to try to find an answer to the eternal question: when will the Alliance’s words become an official decision?

“At least we Georgians know that we have not spared ourselves on the path to Euro-Atlantic unity, and in this regard, we have done our share alongside our partners,” Kipiani said.