This still a developing story that could be huge for Ukraine. The news today that the NATO meeting currently going on in Ankara, Turkey is all set to announce a new status for Ukraine as a contributor to the alliance\u2019s security:<\/p>\n
Ukraine set to gain new status as NATO allies unveil military pledge in Ankara<\/p>\n
Kyiv will be recognised as a \u2018contributor\u2019 to the alliance\u2019s security<\/p>\n
Ukraine is set to take centre stage at the NATO summit in Ankara, where allies will formally recognise the country not only as a recipient of Western support but as a contributor to the alliance\u2019s security.<\/p>\n
The shift will come as part of a new multi-annual financial pledge, a showcase for Kyiv\u2019s rapidly expanding defence industry and an invitation to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine\u2019s president, to a dinner of NATO leaders on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
He is expected to leave Ankara with a new summit pledge in a declaration by allies to\u00a0provide \u20ac70 billion<\/a>\u00a0in military assistance to Ukraine this year and again next year.<\/p>\n The pledge was one of the remaining sticking points that diplomats hammered out on Friday during their third and final round of negotiations for the summit declaration to be endorsed by all 32 allies.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.euractiv.com\/news\/ukraine-set-to-gain-new-status-as-nato-allies-unveil-fresh-military-pledge<\/a><\/p>\n What will this new status mean for Ukraine? To wit:<\/p>\n *NATO allies will officially recognize Ukraine not just as a recipient of aid, but as an official \u201ccontributor\u201d to Euro-Atlantic security. This elevated non-member status establishes a framework for institutional integration and multi-year financial assistance, though it falls short of the formal accession and Article 5 security guarantees of full NATO<\/p>\n *Ukraine\u2019s current position as a supplicant for aid officially changes with this re-designation \u2026 from a petitioner of aid to an invaluable security partner. This is huge when one considers Ukraine\u2019s position a scant two years ago when the Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives held hostage U.S. aid to Ukraine. The ensuing \u201cshell hunger\u201d forced Ukraine to go into a deeper defensive crouch \u2026 thereby handing Russia wide swaths of Ukrainian countryside by default.<\/p>\n *NATO, spearheaded by European allies and Canada, has created the \u201cUkraine Defence Pledge,\u201d a massive financial and military assistance package including over E70 billion (roughly $80 billion) allocated for 2026 alone. This is a huge influx of cash for Ukraine to go shopping or to build whatever it needs to prosecute the war and to keep its economy going. The signal to Putin? Ukraine will not buckle, buddy. Your own Russian economy is failing and you can\u2019t even pay for new recruits, you can\u2019t get supplies to your soldiers in the field and you\u2019re now unable to even give your own people a single gallon of gasoline. A crucial piece of of Putin\u2019s calculus in invading Ukraine was that when push came to shove, neither NATO nor Europe would come to Ukraine\u2019s aid. He figured the \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d crowd would sacrifice Ukraine to continue their trade and profits from Russia.<\/p>\n *Ukraine\u2019s new position as \u2018contributor\u2019 to the alliance\u2019s security also deepens its joint production and technological expertise with member states, particularly regarding drone warfare and rapid defense manufacturing, which is already burgeoning at a rapid pace.<\/p>\n *Ukraine, most importantly gains, via this elevated non-member contributor status an institutional anchor and reliable long-term backing without triggering the immediate Article 5. While President Zelenskyy and his allies continue to push for formal accession, full membership remains unfeasible at this time, for whatever reasons, and would require a unanimous consensus among all 32 member states, something that Krasnov has publicly refused to agree to. But on many practical levels, Ukraine becomes de facto NATO if not de jure.<\/p>\n A huge credit goes to President Joe Biden, the one I call JRB, for stepping into the breach and holding things down in order to enable the coalescing of the forces, however slow, which has made the current situation possible. History will account his role as invaluable. In a way, JRB has scored another victory over Krasnov, as now even Krasnov has realized in supporting Putin, he had bet on the wrong dog in the fight. The ever insincere Krasnov is now going along despite his usual self-indulgent castigation of NATO as \u201cmooching off of America\u201d. He may even try, as is his wont to take credit but all who have followed his self-dealing, mendacious and disrespectful treatment of President Zelenskyy and Ukraine know better. JRB, as a true American instinctively knew that siding with a people fighting for their freedom, no strings attached, is always the right thing to do.<\/p>\n ADAPTIVE UKRAINE is going to win this war because it is a war of self-preservation. As President Zelenskyy described it yesterday: <\/p>\n \u201cFrankly we take no pride in this[the war and Ukrainian drones bombing Russian industrial assets],\u201d Zelenskyy said, noting that the war with Russia \u2014 now in its fifth year \u2014 is one \u201cwe did not seek but one we are forced to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n