Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticises ‘absurd’ lack of timetable for Ukraine to join NATO as he arrives at summit in Vilnius
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has criticised the “absurd” absence of a timetable for his country to join NATO as leaders met at a summit in Lithuania.
US President Joe Biden described the gathering as a “historic moment” and said Washington agreed with a proposal, yet to be released publicly, to outline a path for Ukraine’s eventual membership of the alliance.
However, Mr Zelenskyy, who is in Vilnius for the summit, expressed disappointment at how the negotiations were playing out.
“We value our allies,” he wrote on Twitter but added that “Ukraine also deserves respect”.
“It’s unprecedented and absurd when timeframe is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
He added: “Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.”
The public flash of anger from the Ukrainian president, who has been lauded in the West as a hero for his leadership, could renew tensions in Vilnius just as they had begun to subside.
Mr Zelenskyy later addressed a crowd at a concert being held alongside the conference in Lithuania’s capital, telling a crowd full of people waving Ukrainian flags that “NATO will make Ukraine safer and Ukraine will make NATO stronger”.
Zelenskyy’s last-minute brinkmanship was not enough to produce a significant breakthrough
A well-timed Tweet by Ukraine’s president condemned as “absurd” any failure by NATO allies to offer his country a clear timeline for membership to join the club.
It was posted just as leaders of the 31 member states began a crunch meeting in Lithuania on Tuesday to finalise the wording of an offer around membership, with division on whether or not to give Kyiv the formal invitation it has lobbied hard for.
In the end, however, the last-minute brinkmanship by Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not enough to produce a significant breakthrough.
The end result appeared to be more of a fudge, with a reaffirming of NATO’s belief that Ukraine’s future is as part of the alliance but without offering any kind of timeline.
Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO chief, did his best effort to describe the outcome, contained in a communique as a “strong package for Ukraine and a clear path towards its membership”.
Mr Zelenskyy will be sure to offer his views at a dinner with NATO leaders on Tuesday evening and when he meets with them at the summit on Wednesday.
Offering a sense of the internal discussions that pre-empted the announcement, Petr Pazel, the Czech president, said his country and a majority of other allies were in favour of Ukraine’s accession to start as soon as its war with Russia is over.
“However, there are still some allies who have some concerns,” he told Sky News earlier in the day.
A European diplomatic source identified Germany and the United States as having been resistant to going too far on the language.
Ultimately, NATO is an alliance that works by consensus – one of its core strengths. But it means the group can only move as fast as its most resistant member.
The job now will be to overcome Ukrainian disappointment and focus on supporting its war effort as until that is over any hope of membership to NATO is a pipedream.
Responding to Mr Zelenskyy’s comments, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said a timeline for Ukraine’s membership in the alliance has not been set out as it is “conditions-based”.
Speaking at a news conference this afternoon, Mr Stoltenberg said there has “never been a stronger message from NATO at any time”.
The alliance chief said members had agreed a “substantive package” to move Ukraine closer and were sending a “strong political message with the language on membership”.
“If you look at all membership processes there have not been timelines… they are conditions based, have always been,” Mr Stoltenberg told reporters in Vilnius.
On Monday evening, the night before the summit opened, Turkey withdrew its objections to Sweden joining the alliance, a step towards the unity Western leaders have been eager to demonstrate in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The deal was reached after days of intensive meetings, and it is poised to expand the alliance’s strength in northern Europe.
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Turkey ratifies Sweden’s NATO accession
“Rumours of the death of NATO’s unity are greatly exaggerated,” Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, told reporters on Tuesday.
According to a joint statement issued when the deal was announced, Mr Erdogan will ask Turkey’s parliament to approve Sweden joining NATO.
Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden were among the attendees in Vilnius
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is expected to take a similar step.
The outcome is a victory for Mr Biden, as he has described NATO’s expansion as an example of how Russia’s invasion has backfired on Vladimir Putin.
Finland has already become the 31st member of the alliance, and Sweden will become the 32nd. Both Nordic countries were historically non-aligned until the war increased fears of Russian aggression.
Because of the deal on Sweden’s membership, “this summit is already historic before it has started”, Mr Stoltenberg said.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters NATO’s expansion is “one of the reasons that led to the current situation”.
“It looks like the Europeans don’t understand their mistake,” Mr Peskov said. He warned against putting Ukraine on a fast track for NATO membership.
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“Potentially it’s very dangerous for the European security, it carries very big risks,” Mr Peskov added.
Mr Biden began Tuesday by meeting Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, where he emphasised his commitment to transatlantic cooperation.
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NATO head on Ukraine’s accession
“Nothing happens here that doesn’t affect us,” he told Mr Nauseda. The White House said Mr Nauseda presented Mr Biden with the Order of Vytautas the Great, the highest award a Lithuanian president can bestow. Mr Biden is the first US president to receive it.
Mr Biden and Mr Erdogan were scheduled to meet on Tuesday evening, and it was unclear how some of the Turkish president’s other demands would be resolved.
He has been seeking advanced American fighter jets and a path towards membership of the European Union.
The White House has expressed support for both, but publicly insisted that the issues were not related to Sweden joining NATO.
“I stand ready to work with President Erdogan and Turkey on enhancing defence and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic area,” Mr Biden said in a statement on Monday.
Can it be a coincidence that US planes attacked Syria around the very time the Epstein files were released?
It would be cynical – but then again, it would be how politics works.
The deadline-day release of the Epstein files had White House media management written all over it, unredacted.
Initial searches for Trump’s name within the Department of Justice search function returned nothing, while the presence of former president Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was everywhere.
It is PR strategy 101 – front-load the release of documents with the Democrat stuff and save any possible Trump content for a soft landing sometime between Christmas and New Year.
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Pic: NBC
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By that time, the public will have softened its focus on the story – it’s what the festive season does.
The presence of celebrity in the latest release might also feather Trump’s bed.
It’s clear that iconic superstars like Mick Jagger and Diana Ross were courted by Epstein as innocents, ignorant of his criminality. To see them in the files cements a narrative of a monster who lured the unsuspecting into his orbit.
We support Jagger and Ross as treasured icons, so we remind ourselves that simply being included in the files doesn’t equate to wrongdoing or knowledge of it. In turn, it shapes an empathy around the predicament that will extend to Trump and, perhaps, the benefit of any doubt.
Of course, not everyone will see it that way – the people who see a cynical exercise in delay and obfuscation, constituting a gross insult to the Epstein survivors at the heart of the story.
Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Jackson. Pic: US DoJ
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For all the talk (by the Trump administration) of a tight time scale and a willingness to act transparently, survivors and their supporters point out that Donald Trump could have published all the Epstein files long ago, never mind drip feed them with wide-ranging redactions.
Not to have done so is an affront to them and an attempt to evade accountability.
For all the talk about the release of the files, their significance is undermined by the lack of context. We are shown pictures and documents that reflect the life of a thoroughly unpleasant individual who inflicted suffering on an industrial scale. But with redactions, and without explanations, we are left having to join the dots in an effort to establish criminal behaviour and blame.
It is a level of uncertainty surrounding the Epstein files and a source of dissatisfaction to survivors, for whom justice further delayed is justice further denied.
Ukraine has struck a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, a Kyiv intelligence source has said.
The ship, called the Qendil, suffered “critical damage” in the attack, according to a member of the SBU, Ukraine’s internal security agency.
The tanker is said to be part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” – a group of ageing vessels that Kyiv alleges helps Moscow exports large quantities of crude oil despite Western sanctions.
The SBU source said Ukrainian drones hit the ship in neutral waters more than 2,000 kilometres (1,243 miles) from Ukraine.
They said: “Russia used this tanker to circumvent sanctions and earn money that went to the war against Ukraine.
“Therefore, from the point of view of international law and the laws and customs of war, this is an absolutely legitimate target for the SBU.
“The enemy must understand that Ukraine will not stop and will strike it anywhere in the world, wherever it may be.”
The vessel was empty at the time of the attack, the Ukrainian source added.
Speaking during a live TV event, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, claimed the attack would not disrupt supplies, but vowed that Russia would retaliate nonetheless.
He added that Russia regularly responded with “much stronger strikes” against Ukraine.
Putin also warned against any threat to blockade Russia’s coastal exclave Kaliningrad, which he said would “just lead to unseen escalation of the conflict” and could trigger a “large-scale international conflict”.
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Sky military analyst Michael Clarke said Ukraine’s claim about causing significant damage to the ship was “probably true”.
He added: “The Ukrainians obviously feel that they can legitimise this sort of operation.”
The Qendil, pictured near Istanbul last month. Pic: Reuters
The attack comes after the European Union announced it would provide a €90bn (£79bn) interest-free loan to Ukraine.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian parliament, told Sky News that the money would “tremendously enhance” Kyiv’s defensive capabilities.
However, he said the International Monetary Fund estimated that Ukraine needed $137bn to “keep running”.
“The aggressor should be punished”, Mr Merezhko added, as he argued that frozen Russian assets in Europe should be used to help fund his country’s defence.
He vowed that Ukraine would “continue to fight” for the move, adding that it was “a matter of justice”.
Protesters have stormed the headquarters of two major newspapers in Bangladesh, amid widespread unrest following the death of a political activist.
A mob set fire to the offices of the Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper and the English-language Daily Star in the capital Dhaka, leaving journalists and other staff stuck inside.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily was one of the two newspapers that were targeted. Pic: AP.
One of the Daily Star’s journalists, Zyma Islam, wrote on Facebook: “I can’t breathe anymore. There’s too much smoke.”
Both dailies stopped updating their online editions after the attacks and did not publish broadsheets on Friday.
Troops were deployed to the Star building and firefighters had to rescue the journalists trapped inside. The blaze was brought under control early on Friday.
The latest protests erupted a year after the July Revolution ousted PM Sheikh Hasina. Pic: PA.
Political activist Sharif Osman Hadi died in hospital late on Thursday, six days after the youth leader was shot while riding on a rickshaw in Dhaka.
Bangladesh’s interim government urged people on Friday to resist violence as police and paramilitary troops fanned out
across the capital and other cities following the protests overnight. They have sparked concerns of fresh unrest ahead of national elections, which Mr Hadi had been due to stand in.
He was a prominent activist in the political uprising last year that forced the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country. Mr Hadi spent six days on life support in a hospital in Singapore before he succumbed to his injuries.
Mr Hadi died a week after he was shot by a man on a motorbike. Pic: PA.
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets following news of Mr Hadi’s death on Thursday night, where they rallied at Shahbagh Square near the Dhaka University campus, according to media reports.
A group of demonstrators gathered outside the head office of the Muslim-majority country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily, before vandalising the building and setting it on fire.
A few hundred yards away, another group of protesters pushed into the Daily Star offices and set fire to the building. The protesters are believed to have targeted the papers for their alleged links with India and closeness to Bangladesh‘s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.
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Although calm had returned to much of the country on Friday morning, protesters carrying national flags and placards
continued demonstrating at Shahbagh Square in Dhaka, chanting slogans and vowing not to return until justice was served.
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Last year’s mass uprising erupted from student protests against a quota system that awarded 30% of government jobs to relatives of veterans.
The July 2024 protest, which resulted in as many as 1,400 deaths according to the United Nations, was dubbed the first “Gen Z” revolution.
Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed was forced to resign in August 2024 and fled to India. She was later sentenced to death in absentia.
Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia. Pic: AP
Dr Yunus was then sworn in as interim leader.
The country’s Islamists and other opponents of Ms Hasida have accused her government for being subservient to India.
Mr Hadi was a fierce critic of Ms Hasina and neighbouring India.
He had planned to run as an independent candidate in a constituency in Dhaka at the next national elections due to be held in February.
Authorities said they had identified the suspects in Mr Hadi’s shooting, and the assassin was also likely to have fled to India. Two men on a motorbike followed Hadi and one opened fire before they fled the scene.
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