NATO leaders gathered today to launch a new forum for ties with Ukraine, after committing to provide the country with even more military assistance for fighting Russia, but only vague assurances of future membership.

United States President Joe Biden and his Nato counterparts sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the new Nato-Ukraine Council, a permanent body where the 31 allies and Ukraine can hold consultations and call for meetings in emergency situations.

The setting is part of Nato’s effort to bring Ukraine as close as possible to the military alliance without actually joining it. 

On Tuesday, the leaders said in their communique summarising the summit’s conclusions that Ukraine can join “when allies agree and conditions are met.”

“Today we meet as equals,” Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday at a joint news conference alongside Mr Zelensky. 

He added: “I look forward to the day we meet as allies.”

The ambiguous plan for Ukraine’s future membership reflects the challenges of reaching consensus among the alliance’s current members while the war continues, and has frustrated President Zelensky even as he expressed appreciation for the seemingly endless line of military hardware promised by the Group of Seven industrial nations.

“The results of the summit are good, but if there were an invitation, that would be ideal,” President Zelensky said.

Despite his disappointment, the Ukrainian leader was more conciliatory today than the day before, when he criticised the lack of a timeline for membership as “unprecedented and absurd.”

Nato’s eastward expansion has been cited by Russia as well as China as a cause of the war, and with Ukraine’s “demilitarisation” a stated war aim of Moscow, promised Nato membership could complicate peace talks.

Peace campaigners slammed the role played by members of the military alliance.

CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said: “The governments of nuclear-armed states will say anything to justify their possession of nuclear arsenals, from ensuring our security to job creation.”

MEP Mick Wallace described Nato as “the merchants of death,” who he said “serve the interests of the military-industrial complex at great expense to the people of the world.”

International human rights activist Ajamu Baraka blasted Nato, saying it was “the face of white supremacist criminality. They would rather blow up the world before surrendering white power to the majority.”