National flags hang at the entrance, ahead of the NATO foreign ministers meeting, at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO is highly unlikely to heed Ukraine's call for a membership invitation at a meeting on Tuesday, according to diplomats, dashing Kyiv's hopes of a political boost as it struggles on the battlefield and awaits Donald Trump's return to the White House.
In a letter to his NATO counterparts ahead of the meeting, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said an invitation would remove one of Russia's main arguments for waging its war - namely, preventing Ukraine from joining the alliance.
But there is no sign of the required consensus among NATO's 32 members for such a decision at the foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels, said diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It will take weeks and months to get consensus," a senior NATO diplomat said on Monday. "I don't see that happening tomorrow, I would be very surprised."
A senior U.S. official said the meeting would focus on surging support for Ukraine so it was in the strongest possible position next year, "going into possible negotiations".
"The best way to do that is to surge money, munitions and mobilisation," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $725 million.
MUTUAL DEFENCE
Ukraine sees NATO membership as the best guarantee of its future security. Under NATO's Article 5 mutual defence pact, members agree to treat an attack on one as an attack on all and come to each other's aid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested on Friday in a Sky News interview that putting territory currently controlled by his government "under the NATO umbrella" would stop the "hot phase" of the war.
His comments came as Ukraine faces a tough winter on the battlefield, with Moscow's troops advancing in the east and Russian airstrikes targeting the country's hobbled energy grid.
While NATO has declared Ukraine will join its ranks and that the country's path to NATO is "irreversible", it has not issued an invitation or set out a timeline for membership.
Any such decision would depend above all on NATO's predominant power, the United States, so will soon be a matter for Trump, when he returns as U.S. president next month.
Biden administration officials are aware that any major move on Ukraine should ideally have the backing of the incoming government to ensure it has a lasting impact.
Ukraine was among the topics of a discussion in recent weeks between U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his successor Mike Waltz but the level of alignment, if any, between the outgoing and incoming administrations remains unclear.
Trump has criticised the scale of U.S. aid for Kyiv and said he will end the war in a day. But he has not set out a detailed plan of how he will tackle the conflict.
Some NATO members, such as Hungary, have openly voiced opposition to Ukraine joining the alliance. But some others have also signalled they do not think the time is right, such as the current U.S. and German governments, according to diplomats.
(Additional reporting by Lili Bayer and Andrew Gray; Writing by Andrew Gray, editing by Deepa Babington)
