Ukraine Is Never Joining NATO

There is no polite way to say this, so let’s not bother trying: Ukraine is not going to join NATO.

Not now, not next year, not at the next summit, and very likely not ever.

It doesn’t matter how many times Western leaders recycle the language of open doors and “aspirational membership.”

It doesn’t matter how many Ukrainians lay down their lives in heroic defense of their country.

And it doesn’t matter how often Ukraine’s cause is framed as the frontline of liberty or the beating heart of Europe. The structural, legal, and strategic obstacles to NATO membership are not going away—and no amount of moral fervor is going to wish them away.

NATO and Ukraine: A Marriage That Won’t Ever Happen

NATO has a hard rule: no country with unresolved border disputes or foreign troops on its soil can join the alliance. This isn’t some footnote to be massaged by clever lawyers. It’s the firewall that keeps the alliance from being dragged into wars it did not choose. If NATO were to admit Ukraine while Russian forces occupy Crimea, the Donbas, and swathes of the south and east, it would instantly transform itself from a defensive alliance into a combatant in a shooting war with a nuclear-armed great power. That’s not collective security—that’s collective suicide.

Of course, this truth is well known in Brussels, Berlin, and Washington. It’s just not spoken out loud. Instead, we’re treated to a ritual dance of evasion: summit communiqués that reaffirm Ukraine’s “future in NATO,” White House statements about “conditions that must be met,” and Kyiv’s own insistence that membership is not a question of if, but when. But no one dares define the conditions. No one admits the when is indefinitely deferred. Everyone smiles, salutes the flag, and kicks the can.

This charade isn’t just dishonest. It’s corrosive. It raises expectations in Ukraine that will never be fulfilled. It fuels strategic fantasies in the West that are disconnected from any plausible theory of deterrence. And it confirms to Russia that the West cannot be trusted to say what it means—or mean what it says. Worst of all, it makes peace harder to reach. As long as NATO membership remains the prize dangled at the end of the war, there is little incentive for compromise in Kyiv, and every incentive for escalation in Moscow.

It didn’t have to be this way. NATO could have told Ukraine the hard truth years ago: that while it has every right to exist in freedom and sovereignty, it does not have a right to NATO membership, and never will—not as long as the current war persists. It could have said that openly, clearly, and without apology. That would have forced a recalibration of Ukrainian strategy and perhaps opened space for a negotiated peace. But instead, the alliance chose ambiguity. It chose posture over prudence, optics over strategy.

Some will say that to shut the door on NATO membership is to reward Russian aggression. That it tells Putin that might makes right. But this gets the logic of deterrence exactly backward. Credibility does not come from making reckless promises we can’t keep. It comes from drawing clear lines and standing by them. Saying no to Ukrainian membership is not appeasement. It is recognition of the alliance’s limits—and a refusal to dilute the meaning of Article 5.

Others argue that admitting Ukraine would deter further Russian adventurism by showing that the West stands firm. But that presumes a world in which Vladimir Putin is frightened by NATO’s rhetoric rather than emboldened by its incoherence. The reality is that every time the West pretends Ukraine is on a path to NATO, it confirms Moscow’s core paranoia and tightens the logic of escalation. If we’re not willing to defend Ukraine as we would defend Warsaw or Riga, we have no business pretending it belongs in the same category.

Some cling to historical analogies: that Germany was divided when West Germany joined NATO, that Finland and Sweden faced obstacles too. But these comparisons are facile. No NATO member has ever been admitted while at war, while under occupation, and while entangled in a conflict that could trigger immediate confrontation with another nuclear power. Ukraine is not West Germany in 1955. It’s a bleeding battlefield in 2025—and everyone knows it.

So let’s stop lying to ourselves. Let’s stop pretending that Ukraine is just a few reforms away from membership. Let’s stop writing summit statements that say everything and mean nothing. Let’s start speaking with clarity. Ukraine will not join NATO. It cannot join NATO. Not without rewriting the alliance’s purpose, gambling its cohesion, and courting catastrophe.

That doesn’t mean abandoning Ukraine. On the contrary, it means supporting Ukraine in ways that actually make sense: with arms, with training, with long-term aid packages, and with binding bilateral security guarantees—real ones, not paper-thin declarations like the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine can become a heavily armed, resilient buffer state with deep Western partnerships. It can become the Israel of Eastern Europe—militarily formidable, strategically aligned, but outside of NATO’s formal structures. That is a model worth building. It is also a model that reflects reality.

NATO’s job is not to chase utopias or perform morality plays. Its job is to protect its members, preserve peace among nuclear powers, and keep the alliance from unraveling under the weight of its own contradictions. That means admitting what every serious strategist already knows: Ukraine’s path to NATO doesn’t exist. The door isn’t open. There is no path. And the sooner we stop pretending otherwise, the better for everyone involved.

We owe Ukraine the truth. Not illusions. Not false promises. And not one more year of performative pledges with no plan. Ukraine has earned respect. It deserves security. But NATO? No chance.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.