It is, in a way, kyiv's response to Vladimir Putin's martial speech.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday that Ukraine would sign an accelerated application for NATO membership, minutes after Russia formalized the annexation of four regions in the east and south of the country.
However, such a prospect is far from becoming a reality.
On the one hand, as the Director General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg immediately reminded us, it would require the unanimity of the 30 Member States.
However, "no consensus exists between the Allies who emphasize the necessary political and military reforms as a prerequisite", recalled last March in a strategic note Amélie Zima, researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School.
The United States and Canada said they were in favor in principle of Ukraine's possible accession to NATO on Friday evening… but without endorsing an accelerated procedure.
For General Dominique Trinquand, former head of the French military mission to the UN, this argument of unanimity between member states conceals deeper reasons.
Starting with the fact that “Ukraine is a country at war, so that would bring NATO directly to war against Russia, which Western states have always wanted to avoid”, he develops.
Article 5 of the NATO Treaty stipulates that if a member country is attacked, each of the other States “shall consider this act of violence as an armed attack directed against the whole of the members”.
"A way to reaffirm in which camp Ukraine is"
To participate in the "action plan for membership" of NATO, the candidate countries must moreover have settled "their international disputes by peaceful means (...) in accordance with the principles of the OSCE and which they seek good neighborly relations", indicates the organization.
"In fact, the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, the persistence of the conflict in the Donbass and the war unleashed by the government of Vladimir Putin in February 2022 obstruct any possibility for kyiv to join NATO", wrote in March last Amélie Zime.
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Emmanuel Macron has always assumed that he does not want to go to "war" with Russia and to "continue to talk to everyone", as he repeated during his speech at the conference of ambassadors at the Élysée Palace on 1 september.
And therefore, in particular, to Vladimir Putin.
"To accept that Ukraine join NATO quickly would have fallen into a trap and would prove Putin right, who would say:
I told you so
," said geopolitical scientist Dominique Moïsi.
As for the possible accession of Ukraine to the European Union, that within NATO would therefore not become a reality anytime soon.
“President Zelensky has no illusions that he could join NATO soon.
I think that his statements on Friday are above all a way of opposing Putin and reaffirming which camp Ukraine is on, namely the Western camp,” concludes General Trinquand.
For Dominique Moïsi, “the most favorable scenario for Ukraine in the medium term would be to regain possession of its territories, to be a sovereign country, a member of the European Union, but not of NATO”.