In 2024, NATO members gathered to declare that, after two years of bitter war ravaging the country, Ukraine was on an irreversible path to NATO membership.
Two years on, the statement still takes pride of place on the NATO website, but the promise rings hollow. When alliance members descended on Ankara last month for the bloc’s summit, there were sweeping declarations of support and pledges of funding, yet not a word was uttered about when Kyiv could expect to be welcomed into the club.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cannot kick up a fuss about this. His words are scrutinized endlessly by his allies, his adversaries, and most of all his own people. The former commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhnyi, is under no such pressure to mince his words.
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“I know NATO very well. For 12 years, I personally worked to ensure that we met NATO standards, and every year I listened to tales that we were about to join NATO. Unfortunately, we never will,” Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, reportedly told fellow diplomats in Kyiv earlier this month.
This was met with jubilation in the Russian media, where the former general’s words were paraded as a “belated epiphany” and evidence that the “corrupt Kyiv regime” had “betrayed its people.”
Yet Zaluzhnyi, who successfully repelled Russia’s 2022 assault on Kyiv and spearheaded Ukraine’s rapid adoption of battlefield tech innovation to combat its larger adversary, is not capitulating to the Kremlin’s perspective; he is proposing a new approach to Western security—one in which Ukraine plays a leading role.
It Was All a Dream
Ukraine has been waiting a long time to be welcomed into the transatlantic security club. Eighteen years, to be precise.
It was at their summit in Bucharest in April 2008—an event attended by Vladimir Putin—that NATO allies first stood together and declared Ukraine and Georgia would one day be accepted into the alliance.
Russia went on to annex Crimea from Ukraine, armed separatists in the nation’s eastern Donbas region and then launched a full-scale invasion designed to conquer Kyiv. It was only in July 2024, at the alliance’s 75th anniversary celebrations in Washington, that the bloc finally confirmed it would continue to support Ukraine’s journey down the “irreversible path” to NATO membership.
Then America reset the game board. In February 2025, newly minted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States did not consider NATO membership a “realistic outcome.”
Last month’s NATO summit in Ankara seemingly confirmed Ukraine’s NATO bid as a pipe dream: the declaration called Kyiv a contributor to transatlantic security and pledged €70 billion (over $80 billion) in military equipment and assistance—but the word membership was not mentioned once.
Formally, the door remains open, but Ukraine may never reach it. Zaluzhnyi, for one, says Ukraine must recognize this and seize the initiative to determine its own future.
Although he later stressed his enduring support for NATO and said Ukraine should still become a member, the former commander in chief offered a damning assessment of the security bloc as a hangover from the mid-20th century, arguing Ukraine’s innovation of battlefield tactics has surpassed NATO’s outdated thinking.
“It is impossible to join an organization that possesses the doctrines of World War II with the level of development that exists in the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” he said at a meeting of ambassadors in Kyiv on August 3, according to a report by European Pravda. “Most likely, NATO will remain in the same form as it is, and will spend 12 years, like Ukraine, transitioning to the standards that need to be achieved.”
Music to Putin’s Ears?
It wasn’t long after Ukrainian press reported Zaluzhnyi’s comments to fellow ambassadors that Russia’s vast network of state-backed media outlets published interviews with various commentators claiming Ukraine has finally come to the realization that Moscow was right all along: Kyiv should never have trusted the West.
Unsurprisingly, two of the most forceful of these commentators are based in Ukrainian territory now occupied by Russia. Mikhail Sheremet, a representative of Crimea in Russia’s State Duma, told the state-backed TASS news agency that “Zaluzhny’s statements speak both of a belated epiphany” on the part of Kyiv and serve as proof that Zelensky’s government had “betrayed the interests of its people by rejecting…favorable peace proposals.”
This tirade was followed up by Alexander Protsenko, a member of the Russian Society of Political Scientists based in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, who interpreted Zaluzhnyi’s words as a “tangible, public slap in the face” for Zelensky’s “long-standing dogma.”
Zaluzhnyi’s comments were also seized upon as fresh evidence to support one of Moscow’s favorite stories: that the former general is gearing up to knock Zelensky off the throne. Here, at least, there may be a kernel of truth.
When Zelensky relieved Zaluzhnyi of his duties as commander in chief two years into the war effort, rumors abounded of a rift between the pair. Zaluzhnyi was awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine” for his efforts but was promptly removed from the military apparatus and instead awarded a position as ambassador to the U.K.
Speaking at an event hosted in London by the Chatham House think tank and attended by Newsweek earlier this year, Zaluzhnyi refused to say whether he would challenge Zelensky for the presidency. He affirmed his only priority is to carry out his duties as ambassador to the best of his abilities and that, until martial law is lifted or Ukraine is victorious in war, he will do nothing that could cause division.
But the general has acknowledged that his relationship with the president soured ahead of his sacking in February 2024, while a July report by Ukrainska Pravda citing sources close to both men claimed Zaluzhnyi intends to run against the incumbent Zelensky should Kyiv decide to hold elections.
That said, Moscow should be careful what it wishes for.
Zaluzhnyi’s criticism of NATO by no means equates to skepticism of Ukraine’s fight against Russia, and replacing the incumbent Ukrainian president—a former comedian, as Russian commentators love to remind us—with a battle-hardened military man who repelled its assault on Kyiv and presided over the technological revolution of Ukraine’s armed forces does not seem like a good trade.
The former general’s vision is not one of a subservient Ukraine, humbly accepting handouts from its Western benefactors while handing over all its battlefield knowledge and drone technology in the hope it will one day receive a golden ticket to NATO.
Flipping the Script
Zaluzhnyi is committed to ensuring this very scenario does not materialize, declaring during an interview with the Ukraine Crisis Media Center last week that “Ukraine must not become the foundation of European armed forces at Ukraine’s expense.”
On the contrary, he lays out a future in which Kyiv takes a leading role in shaping the European security landscape, entering into multilateral security partnerships with various NATO countries based on shared security, economic and technological interests that can act outside of the slow, inflexible alliance structure.
There is evidence that Ukraine is already hard at work on this under Zelensky.
Kyiv recently cut through the red tape surrounding its export licenses, allowing its myriad drone manufacturers to strike up joint ventures and manufacturing initiatives with companies across Europe, Canada and the U.S., provided a portion of the revenue comes back to Kyiv to guarantee Ukraine’s economic and industrial development.
There is also a precedent of multilateral security blocs operating outside of NATO.
Zaluzhnyi cited one of them directly in his interview last week: the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), led by the U.K. along with the Nordic and Baltic states, of which Ukraine is an “enhanced partner.” The JEF acts as a rapid response force and surveillance initiative to defend the North Atlantic, the Baltic Sea and Arctic waters against Russian aggression, and according to Zaluzhnyi, serves as a model for future security partnerships between Ukraine and other states.
“While being part of this bloc within NATO, just as Sweden and Finland have done, one could begin to create a completely different bloc right there within NATO, one with entirely different capabilities,” he told the Ukraine Crisis Media Center. “Why not use this, for instance, to build up the combined capabilities of the Nordic and Baltic countries and Ukraine, envisioning this as the prototype for the future armed forces of a united Europe?”
Ukraine has already twice proven it is capable of doing what many believed was impossible.
In February 2022, Russia sent tanks, planes, helicopters and thousands upon thousands of troops bearing down on the Ukrainian capital. Many expected Kyiv to fall within weeks, if not days. Instead, it held.
Then, critics said that, while Ukraine may be able to hold the Russian army at bay, it could never take the fight to Moscow. Now, Kyiv’s drone operators routinely deliver long-range strikes hundreds of miles beyond the Russian border, sinking ships, destroying oil refineries and demolishing infrastructure supporting Vladimir Putin’s war effort, and Ukraine fields one of the world’s most technologically advanced fighting forces.
The next upset could unfold on an institutional level.
If Zaluzhnyi gets his way, Ukraine will assume a leading role in reshaping Western security architecture from outside the alliance it spent years trying to enter. Kyiv will turn its battlefield experience, technology and regional alliances into a model built to deter wars Europe now fears rather than ones it remembers—and will wield more influence as a result.