U.S. officials at the NATO summit in Vilnius wanted to withdraw an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance.
Source. This was reported by The Washington Post, citing six people familiar with the matter.
According to the sources, Washington's dissatisfaction was caused by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's Twitter post, in which he criticized the vague wording of the summit's final communiqué and the lack of specific terms for Ukraine's accession to NATO.
"It seems that there is no readiness either to invite Ukraine to NATO or to make it a member of the alliance," Zelensky wrote, calling the whole situation "unprecedented and absurd." "Uncertainty is weakness. And I will speak openly about this at the summit," he concluded.
This statement "stunned" NATO representatives in Vilnius and "enraged" the American delegation, according to WP sources.
Immediately afterward, ministers and other senior officials held informal talks on how the alliance should respond to Zelenskyy's criticism.
U.S. officials suggested softening the communiqué's language to make it less favorable to Ukraine's rapid accession to the alliance, three senior sources said.
"Some wanted to remove the reference to 'invitation' or find another place for the word," said one of the people involved in the talks.
French President Emmanuel Macron, in particular, insisted on retaining the original wording. He was supported by the countries of Central Europe and the Baltic states.
As a result, a consensus was reached that rewriting the document would delay its publication, and "in the end, those who were most concerned about Ukraine's reaction concluded that it was better to stick to the text" as it was originally drafted.
"This sends a very clear and strong message to both Ukraine and Russia," the source added.
Following the two-day NATO summit held on July 11-12, the G7 countries signed a declaration on security guarantees for Ukraine. The office of the Ukrainian president said that this is an important victory on the way to joining the alliance. The summit also simplified the membership procedure for Ukraine and announced the creation of the NATO-Ukraine Council.
According to the Washington Post, this incident illustrates the dissatisfaction with the pressure tactics used by Volodymyr Zelensky within NATO. Even his staunchest supporters this week questioned whether his emotional outburst was useful for Ukraine.
At the same time, the behind-the-scenes spat that Zelensky provoked showed how little the alliance can do about it: NATO countries are already involved in helping Ukraine and many member states remain sympathetic to Zelenskyy's demands for more active support.
Despite the dissatisfaction with the Ukrainian president's publication, there was a general understanding that the leader of a country at war must show that he is ready to do anything to protect the interests of his people, the newspaper points out.