2025 Summer NATO Summit in The Hague: The Moment of Truth

Ukraine should retain its right to join NATO and choose its security partners when concluding peace treaties.

Ukraine's relations with NATO are one of the fundamental issues in the multilateral diplomatic dialogue on achieving peace in Ukraine. In this regard, an important signal will be given by the formula regarding Ukraine in the final communiqué of the summit in The Hague, which will take place in late June 2025.

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiha mentioned that the Alliance should confirm the irreversibility of the membership course and state that this decision cannot be negotiated with the Kremlin. “If we get even a hint of a pause, Moscow will take it as an invitation to another escalation,” the minister emphasized.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that Ukraine's path has gone beyond previous instruments such as Membership Action Plan, MAP, and is now following the political logic of irreversibility.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that any other decision would be a diplomatic gift to Putin. The mood is, frankly, unprecedented: for the first time, there is no “if” discussion in Brussels, but a ‘how’ and “when” discussion.

NATO's policy toward Ukraine is reflected in the documents 

It is enough to look at the evolution of the documents to understand why Ukraine is closer to NATO today than most Eastern European states were at the time of their accession. The 1997 Charter on a Distinctive Partnership set the first political framework; the 2009 Addendum tied Kyiv to intermediate standards; and the 2023 Vilnius Summit decision transformed the Commission into the NATO-Ukraine Council, raising the level of contacts to equal partners at the table. It was then that the Allies noted that Ukraine no longer needed MAP, the classic roadmap for aspirants, as it was already implementing the current Adapted Annual National Program (ANP).

This document is the main tool for measuring progress. It structures reforms in five dimensions: political and economic governance, defense capabilities, resource provision, legal system, and humanitarian and information environment. Each step is recorded twice: in the national government reporting and in the NATO International Staff assessment, which effectively eliminates any subjective interpretations.

What does the Ukraine NATO Annual Program 2025 entail? 

In January 2025, the Ukrainian government approved the ANP-2025, which for the first time included a separate section on joint production of ammunition and drones, as these are the areas that have made Ukraine useful to the allies today. But the main argument in favor of membership is not paper, but practice.

The most prominent example is the State Logistics Operator. In nine months, it signed 358 contracts worth UAH 35.9 billion (about $866 million) and saved UAH 10.4 billion (over $250 million), or almost 25% of the funds, by transferring procurement to Prozorro (public procurement system) and introducing electronic audit. Ukrinform reported this with reference to the Ministry of Defense; NATO headquarters called this case an example of transparency that can be scaled up to other member states.

Another telling story is the DELTA combat situational awareness system. During the CWIX-2024 exercise in Bydgoszcz, Poland, Ukrainian officers connected the system to the TOPAZ artillery control network for the first time, passed five interoperability tests without any errors, and received an official certificate from NATO's Strategic Command. The partners were particularly impressed by the fact that DELTA integrates intelligence without expensive hardware, making it a turnkey solution for states with limited budgets.

An equally important touch is medical reform. In October 2024, an order of the Ministry of Defense on the transition to the NATO role-based medical evacuation system came into force in Ukraine. As a result, the average time for transporting a wounded person from the battlefield to the operating room has been reduced from 112 to 76 minutes. During a briefing on February 6, 2025, Secretary General Mark Rutte stated bluntly: “Ukraine is not just adapting standards, it is modernizing them in real combat, and this experience will be in demand throughout the Alliance.”

Why a NATO membership is a solution for Ukraine, not a Gray Zone

Ukrainians support this course not out of romance, but out of cold calculation. Back in May 2023, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology recorded 89% of supporters of joining NATO, while less than 7% of opponents remained. The trend did not change in March 2025, when a new poll showed that even in the southeast, the level of support reached 72%.

The argument is simple: staying in the gray zone has already resulted in wars twice – in 2014 and 2022. Alternative security schemes, such as the Budapest Memorandum or the Minsk process, collapsed as soon as Russia felt that it did not have an automatic collective response.

For the Alliance itself, Ukrainian membership means cheaper defense of its eastern flank. Instead of maintaining thousands of troops in Poland and the Baltic states, NATO gains an army with real combat experience, its own defense technology cluster, and one of the largest drone fleets in Europe.

A RAND report from February 2025 estimated that Ukraine's full integration would reduce the US need for a forward presence by 28,000 troops, saving the Pentagon about $4.3 billion annually.

What is the essence of Ukraine's NATO-like Guarantee as a Bridge to Article 5?

Given that ratification of Ukraine’s membership by all member-states’ parliaments may take a long time, Kyiv and London are promoting the concept of guarantee elements. The idea is that a group of key allies – Britain, France, Poland, Italy, Turkey, and Canada – should document their readiness to apply collective defense protocols to Ukraine in the event of new aggression, as Reuters called this “Article 5-lite.”

Clear triggers are envisaged: a massive missile attack on the capital, Russian troops crossing the demarcation line, an invasion from Belarus, or a large-scale naval blockade. The mechanism can be incorporated into a peace treaty as a separate annexation or as a protocol to the summit's decisions.

This solution will remove the main concern of skeptics: “What if Putin strikes in the interval between the ceasefire and the formal accession?” The answer becomes simple: a strike on Ukraine comes into automatic use of all necessary force by the Allies, including air defense, air support, and a naval embargo, without a separate consensus of the NATO members.

Irreversibility as the Only Positive Scenario

In a world where the main feature of security has become the ability to act quickly, Ukraine cannot afford to remain in limbo. For Kyiv, NATO membership transforms uncertainty into a guaranteed safeguard, and for the Alliance, it transforms its eastern flank from a potential gap into a line of containment reinforced by an army that proves its effectiveness every day.

The summit in The Hague should put a logical end to this: confirm the irreversibility of the course, fix the elements of guarantees and start the final phase of accession to the Washington Treaty. Ukraine has already paid the highest price for this right and is now turning its experience into added value for the collective defense of the whole of Europe.

Any pause will only postpone the inevitable and will cost both Ukrainians and allies dearly. The only question is whether the Western capitals are ready to make a decision that will demonstrate to Putin that the window of opportunity for revenge is finally closed.

Igor Popov, head of United Ukraine Think Tank, expert on political and security issues