On the eve of the NATO summit, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy assured that his country will become a member of the military alliance, adding that he expects from Vilnius the “algorithm” for this.

“We are still working on the formalities, the exact wording of the confirmation, but we already understand (…) that Ukraine will join the alliance,” said Mr. Zelensky in his evening speech on Monday.

“We are working to make the algorithm with which we will secure our membership, as clean and fast as possible,” he insisted.

European diplomats told the Reuters news agency that Western powers are still finalizing a framework that would offer long-term security guarantees to Kiev and may make it public at the end of the summit.

Negotiations are underway in NATO on whether and when Ukraine will be invited to join, on the conditions it will have to meet and on the mechanism for assessing its progress, the same sources said.

For Mr. Zelensky, the meeting in Vilnius is due to confirm that Ukraine is already a de facto member of NATO, as it has its own weapons and shares the values ​​of its members.

“Even if different positions are expressed, it is clear that Ukraine deserves to be a member of the alliance,” he said in his speech. “Not now – there is a war – but we need a clear signal. And we need it now.”

US President Joe Biden will hold a one-on-one meeting with Mr Zelensky at the summit, a US official told Reuters, although the Ukrainian head of state’s attendance at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in the Lithuanian capital has yet to be officially confirmed. .

Last night Mr Zelensky limited himself to saying that there would be contacts on the sidelines of the summit on further arms deliveries to Kiev, referring to talks with representatives of the US, European states, Canada and Japan.

Russia, for which Ukraine’s accession to NATO is a red line, is threatening countermeasures, warning that any move in this direction would have “very negative consequences for the already half-destroyed European security architecture” and would constitute “a huge risk and threat for our country”, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it yesterday. Any move by the alliance to include Ukraine would result in a “clear and strong response” from the Russian side, he insisted.