Ukraine pushes NATO membership as allies sidestep invite call

By Andrew Gray and Lili Bayer

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Ukraine declared it would not settle for anything less than NATO membership to guarantee its future security, as the alliance sidestepped Kyiv's call for an immediate invitation at a foreign ministers' meeting on Tuesday.

In a letter to his NATO counterparts ahead of the meeting, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said an invitation would remove one of Russia's main arguments for waging its war: preventing Ukraine from joining the alliance.

Although NATO has stated that Ukraine's path to membership is "irreversible", the alliance has not set a date or issued an invitation. Diplomats said there was currently no consensus among its 32 members to do so.

Some countries are waiting to decide their stance until they learn the position of the incoming U.S. administration of President-elect Donald Trump, officials said. The U.S. is NATO's predominant power

After talks between Sybiha and NATO ministers over dinner at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters there had been "no progress" on the membership issue.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said his country was among a group that sees an invitation as "a necessary step" but added: "I don't think that there is ... agreement on that."

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, whose government has close ties with Russia and who visited Moscow this week, said Budapest remained opposed to Ukrainian NATO membership.

"That country is at war and a country at war cannot contribute to the security of the alliance," he told Reuters.

Some analysts and diplomats have suggested Ukraine could receive security guarantees from individual Western countries rather than from NATO as a whole.

Keith Kellogg, an ex-general recently named by Trump as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, co-authored a paper this year that called for putting off NATO membership for Ukraine "for an extended period" in exchange for a "peace deal with security guarantees".

But Ukraine insisted it would accept nothing less than NATO, citing its experience with a pact 30 years ago under which it relinquished nuclear arms in return for security assurances from major powers that proved worthless.

Sybiha brandished a copy of that agreement, known as the Budapest Memorandum, as he arrived at NATO.

"This document failed to secure Ukrainian security and transatlantic security, so we must avoid (repeating) such mistakes," he said.

MILITARY AID

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance was "building the bridge" to membership for Ukraine but the most urgent issue was providing Kyiv with more arms to repel Russian forces as President Vladimir Putin was not interested in peace.

He said the meeting would focus on ensuring Ukraine was in a position of strength whenever it chose to enter peace talks.

"And to get there, it is crucial that more military aid will be pumped into Ukraine."

Ukraine is facing a tough winter, with Moscow's troops advancing in the east and Russian airstrikes targeting the country's hobbled energy grid.

Rutte welcomed new military aid packages for Ukraine from the U.S., Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Norway. The U.S. on Monday announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $725 million.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at NATO headquarters there was "a shared determination" to do "everything that's necessary for Ukraine so that it can protect itself, protect its people, and ultimately find a just and durable solution to the Russian aggression".

Ukraine sees NATO membership as the best guarantee of its future security. Under the mutual defence pact, members of the alliance agree to treat an attack on one as an attack on all and come to each other's aid.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy suggested in a Sky News interview that putting territory currently controlled by his government "under the NATO umbrella" would stop the "hot phase" of the war.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold and Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Andrew Gray; Editing by Deepa Babington, Gareth Jones and David Gregorio)