As of late August, Russia was in control of around 27% of Ukrainian territory, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

Ukraine could potentially join NATO even if parts of its territory remained occupied by Russia, the alliance’s former Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview on Oct. 4.

One of the main arguments against granting Ukraine membership at the current time is that NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause would immediately draw the alliance into a direct war with Russia.

But speaking to the Financial Times, Stoltenberg suggested there could be ways to get around this if the Ukrainian territory considered part of NATO was “not necessarily the internationally recognized border.”

  • @VikthorEnglish
    2•3 months ago

    Honestly, I think that there may be a very legitimate argument that given that Romania and Bulgaria joined – and this becomes even more-significant with a Ukrainian membership – that the scope of Article 6 should be extended to the Black Sea, as we did with Turkey when Turkey joined. Otherwise, it’s possible for Russia to perform a blockade on NATO Black Sea powers and sink their warships without them being able to avail themselves of NATO Article 5 protection.

    Broadly speaking you aren’t wrong but ATM russian navy is unable to blockade even the civilian shipping of a country that has no navy. There is probably no need to resolve this issue now, especially as the Black sea countries are bound by the previous treaties on Black Sea like the Montreux convention. Moscow might be more amenable to changes of these treaties if NATO doesn’t let them win in Ukraine.