The guarded statement irked Volodymyr Zelenskyy yesterday, but the Ukrainian president is still set to come away from today's summit with some tangible rewards. NATO leaders have failed to offer Ukraine a NATO invitation, but have said the country should be allowed to join the military alliance at some point in the future.

It may seem a distant memory once those by-election results come in at the end of next week, but he can at least chalk this up as foreign policy win - even if it doesn’t win him votes back home.

What he wouldn't commit on was the speed of that accession once the conflict was over: while Finland - and soon Sweden - have gained entry in just over a year, the prime minister wasn't willing to give a timeframe for Ukraine: that will be determined, of course, by the pace of the US rather than European allies.īut for a prime minister who is struggling so desperately back home, NATO he can chalk up as a success. He went on talk about 'very significant movements, moments along Ukraine's journey to membership' at this NATO summit, as he stressed what he saw as meaningful progress on the path to membership, such as the removal of the membership plan to simplify qualification once the war is over, as well as the long term multilateral security guarantees that the G7 had signed up for - and that he expects other nations to follow. Those remarks threatened to overshadow what had been a successful summit for the prime minister, and Mr Sunak gave them short shrift at his closing press conference, telling reporters that President Zelenskyy had shown gratitude both to him privately and to the British people publicly, not least when he addressed parliament earlier this year. This analysis comes from our political editor Beth Rigby:įor a leader who has worked tirelessly to repair the damage from some of the provocative and loose language of his two predecessors, Rishi Sunak was understandably terse when asked about his defence secretary's comments on the sidelines of the summitĪs the prime minister met with President Zelenskyy and signed off a G7 declaration on security arrangements for Kyiv, Ben Wallace decided to tell journalists that the UK was 'not Amazon', there to service President Zelenskyy's shopping list of demands, and suggested Ukraine show more gratitude. Earlier Rishi Sunak addressed the NATO summit in Vilnius, where he declined to repeat defence secretary Ben Wallace's comments calling for 'gratitude' from Ukraine for military support from the West.

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