NATO leaders are considering offering an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance once it meets the security “conditions” and is agreed upon by NATO members, a promise with which to renew the commitment already expressed in 2008 to incorporate Kyiv into the organization one day.

At this time, the allied leaders close the final text of the Vilnius summit, in Lithuania, with which they will send a signal to Ukraine to reinforce their Euro-Atlantic perspective, already recognized since the Bucharest summit 15 years ago when they pointed to Ukraine as a future member of NATO.

In this way, NATO takes a step forward although does not use any time reference to Ukraine’s entrythus satisfying Germany and the United States, which were the most reluctant to extend the invitation to Kyiv, which was claimed by Eastern European countries such as Poland and the Baltics.

According to allied sources, the invitation to join when a series of conditions are met is a step forward from allies and definestogether with the multi-year package of several billion in military support and the inauguration of the NATO-Ukraine Council, the largest relationship of the military organization with a third country.

The summit is not without controversy because the terms of the declaration have generated angry criticism from the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, who on his way to Lithuania, where he will participate tomorrow in the first NATO-Ukraine Councilhas branded as “absurd” that a timetable for Ukraine’s entry into NATO is not set and conditions are attached to its membership.

These reproaches have reached Vilnius, according to the sources, amid efforts to shut down the statement. The Ukrainian president has gone so far as to say that “this means that a window of opportunity is being left to haggle over Ukraine’s integration into NATO in the negotiations with Russia.”

Finally the discussion about offer security guarantees to Ukraine to prevent eventual Russian military aggressionsan issue that generates “divergences” between allies due to the military consequences that it would entail, has made its way to the summit and the term is being negotiated to form part of the final communiqué.

This is another example of a diplomatic maneuver by NATO to get even closer to kyiv, explain the allied sources, although, It will not be the organization as a whole but the countries that make up the G7 and some more that can be added who materialize this commitment with Ukraine.