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00:00 and for more on this, I'm joined by our international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert.
00:04 Doug, so Zelensky's really ramping up the pressure on NATO members ahead of this big
00:07 meeting next week.
00:08 He really is, and it's his job to do so, you could argue.
00:10 He's the president of Ukraine, a country at war right now, trying to fend off the Russian
00:15 aggression.
00:16 Look, we have said all along, we know what does Ukraine want.
00:19 What Ukraine desperately wants is to join NATO.
00:22 Ukraine is equally aware, and Volodymyr Zelensky has made this clear, he knows he is not going
00:27 to be allowed to join NATO at this Vilnius summit.
00:30 That's off the table.
00:31 And he has said, we understand that as long as a war with Russia, and Russia is still
00:35 attacking us and we're at war with it, is that we're not going to be able to join the
00:39 Western alliance.
00:40 He understands that imperative there.
00:43 But he's hoping that once the war ends, it will be much sooner rather than later that
00:48 he will join.
00:50 So when you say he's looking for a clear signal, he's basically looking for the blueprint for
00:55 the road ahead once the war ends and wants to know where the NATO allies stand.
01:00 And this is where it gets tricky.
01:01 Yes, NATO support has said time and again that it's four square in solidarity, staunchly
01:06 behind Ukraine as long as it takes.
01:08 We know all of the language.
01:09 It's trotted out time and again.
01:12 That's not going to change at this summit next week in Vilnius where all the NATO leaders
01:15 meet.
01:16 But the problem is not all of the NATO allies.
01:18 A lot of the NATO experts will tell you they're not on the same page when it comes to how
01:23 far to go in bolstering Ukraine and in reassuring it and giving it exactly what it needs, a
01:29 type of security and weaponry that it needs.
01:32 Zelensky himself has said that the counter offensive is perhaps going slower than many
01:39 had hoped or was delayed precisely because the weapons deliveries from the NATO countries
01:45 took so long and still a lot of them haven't come.
01:48 And he said that that allowed Russia, gave Russia extra time to bolster its defenses,
01:52 including sort of minefields that Ukraine is coming up against now, those minefields
01:55 in the trenches.
01:57 He wants not just a show of support.
01:59 He wants to know concretely and specifically what is NATO ready to do for Ukraine after
02:05 the war.
02:06 There are a sort of a coalition of countries within NATO, say the United States, say some
02:11 of the southern European countries, some in Germany as well.
02:16 They tend to, they're seen, and analysts will tell you they're more cautious.
02:19 They do not want to go as quickly.
02:21 They want to support NATO.
02:22 They're four square behind, sorry, Ukraine.
02:24 They're behind Ukraine, but they're not ready to go full out, all out on this.
02:29 And then on the other end of the spectrum, you have Poland, Lithuania, the NATO members
02:33 who have been on the front lines of Russian history, a lot of Russian history, and they
02:37 know what Ukraine's up against.
02:38 And a lot of those central European, eastern European countries, they are four square.
02:42 You help Ukraine now, do whatever it takes to help Ukraine.
02:45 If you can't admit it to NATO now, fine, but do everything else, throw everything in the
02:48 kitchen sink at it right now to try to help it fend off Russia.
02:51 And then in the middle, you have that muddled middle.
02:53 You have countries like France, the United Kingdom, some other northern European countries,
02:58 which are like, you know what, we have to do perhaps more than we've done in the past
03:01 for Ukraine, but we also can't go as far as accession right away.
03:05 So it's sort of that murky middle ground.
03:07 And that's when I say they're not all marching in lockstep, the NATO allies.
03:11 That's where he's trying to ramp up the pressure on them to get them more, to see eye to eye.
03:15 And he'd like them all to adhere more to the Poland and eastern European stance.
03:19 We should mention that the NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg, is holding a news conference
03:22 and he's just said that it's possible to have a positive decision on Swedish NATO membership
03:27 at the summit next week.