NATO's Door Remains Open, Ukraine Will Become Member - Blinken

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – NATO‘s door remains open to Ukraine and the country will become a member the military alliance, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Washington.

Blinken described Finland's accession to the alliance and Sweden's almost completed accession process as a demonstration of NATO's open doors.

"I think the process that we’ve seen in actually record time first with Finland, and now with Sweden, demonstrates that NATO’s door is open, remains open, including to Ukraine which will become a member of NATO," Blinken said on Monday.

As a result of the NATO Summit in Vilnius from July 11-12, NATO leaders agreed on a package of three elements to bring Ukraine closer to the alliance. The first element is the creation of an assistance program for Ukraine that will facilitate its transition to NATO standards, training and doctrine.

The second element is the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine council and the third is the cancellation of the Membership Action Plan for Ukraine, which will allow the shortening of the accession process for the country from two steps to one. However, NATO has not extended an official invitation to Ukraine yet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that NATO expansion to include Ukraine creates a direct national security threat for Russia and Moscow considers the non-aligned status of Ukraine to be extremely important. Putin also said that Russia has always stood against Ukraine's membership in NATO due to its national security concerns, but never opposed its aspirations to join the European Union.

However, without additional funding authorization from Congress, "everything that Ukrainians achieved" on the battlefield will be in jeopardy, Blinken complained.

“It is vital that Congress pass the supplemental budget request the [US] President [Joe Biden] has put before it. Without it, simply put, everything that Ukrainians achieved, and that we've helped them achieve will be in jeopardy,” Blinken stressed.

The upcoming 75th NATO summit that will take place in Washington D.C. in July will be the most ambitious one since the end of the Cold War, Blinken announced.

“All of this will come to an important inflection point when we get to the NATO summit…This is going to be, I think, the most ambitious summit since the end of the Cold War, showing NATO's adaptation to new challenges and new threats,” the secretary of state claimed.

Washington's response to the deadly drone attack against US forces in the Al-Tanf base, an outpost near the Syria-Jordan border, could be multi-leveled and sustained over time, the official said.

"That response could be multi-leveled, come in stages, and be sustained over," Blinken clarified.