Ben Wallace says west would like to see gratitude for help, as Zelenskiy complains over caution on Nato membership
Dan Sabbagh in Vilnius
The British defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has suggested Ukraine needs to put more emphasis on thanking the west for its assistance after Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s complaints on Tuesday that his country had not been issued a firm timetable or set of conditions for joining Nato.
“Whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude,” Wallace said at a briefing in the margins of the Nato summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, when asked about the Ukrainian president’s comments that it was “absurd” for Kyiv to be told it would be welcome in the alliance but not given a date or exact conditions.
“Sometimes you are asking countries to give up their own stocks [of weapons],” Wallace said. “Sometimes you have to persuade lawmakers on the [Capitol] Hill in America.”
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told a public forum at the summit he believed “the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude from the United States government for their willingness to step up and from the rest of the world as well”.
He said: “The United States of America has stepped up to provide an enormous amount of capacity to help ensure that Ukraine’s brave soldiers have the ammunition, air defence, the infantry, fighting vehicles, the mine clearing equipment and so much else to be able to effectively defend against Russia’s onslaught and to take territory back as well.”
Zelenskiy, speaking in Vilnius on Wednesday, said it was “understandable that Ukraine cannot join Nato when at war” but it would have been ideal if there had been an invitation for Kyiv to join the alliance.
He welcomed the results of the Nato summit, in particular the recognition that Ukraine did not need to follow a membership action plan, as well as the positive news on defence packages announced during the summit.
Wallace revealed at the briefing that he had travelled to Ukraine last year to be presented with a shopping list of weapons. “You know, we’re not Amazon,” he said. “I told them that last year, when I drove 11 hours to be given a list.”
But he said he understood Zelenskiy was speaking to his own public and that, despite his complaint on Tuesday, the final summit deal was a good one for Ukraine. There was an acceptance that “Ukraine belongs at Nato” and that amounted to an effective invitation for membership once the conflict had died down.
Britain, the US and global allies were due to unveil new security assurances for Ukraine on Wednesday. A declaration by the G7 industrialised countries “will set out how allies will support Ukraine over the coming years to end the war and deter and respond to any future attack”, a British government statement said.
In practice, this would come as bilateral agreements with Kyiv on long-term military and financial aid to keep Ukraine’s army and economy running. A White House official said the US would start such talks with Kyiv soon.
Russia, which says Nato’s eastward expansion is an existential threat to its own security, swiftly lashed out. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia’s powerful security council and an anti-western hawk, said increased military assistance to Ukraine from Nato was bringing a third world war a step closer.