Zaluzhnyi declares Ukraine will never join NATO, cites outdated doctrines

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom and the general who led the country's armed forces through the first two years of the full-scale invasion, has delivered a blunt verdict: Ukraine will never become a member of NATO. Speaking privately to Ukrainian ambassadors in Kyiv on Monday, he said the alliance remains trapped in the doctrines of the Second World War and cannot adapt fast enough to match the capabilities Ukraine has already developed.

The remarks, reported by Ukrainian media and confirmed to Politico, mark an extraordinary rupture. For more than a decade, Kyiv's official strategy has been built around NATO integration. In 2023, the alliance formally acknowledged Ukraine's eventual membership. Yet Zaluzhnyi, the officer who oversaw the transformation of Ukraine's military from a Soviet-era force into a modern combat organisation, now says that goal is a delusion.

The doctrine gap

"It is impossible to join an organisation that possesses the doctrines of World War II with the level of development that exists in the armed forces of Ukraine," Zaluzhnyi told the ambassadors. He acknowledged that Ukraine still needs technologies held by NATO members, particularly defences against ballistic missiles. But the structural mismatch, in his view, is fundamental. NATO's planning assumptions, force structures and procurement cycles belong to an era of massed armour and static front lines. Ukraine fights a war of distributed sensors, massed uncrewed systems and rapid software iteration.

Zaluzhnyi went further. "Most likely, NATO will remain in the same form as it is, and will spend 12 years, like Ukraine, transitioning to the standards that need to be achieved in order to be at least half the level of the Russian Federation," he said. The comparison is deliberate. Russia, under the pressure of war, has restructured its forces, expanded its defence industrial base and accelerated its own adaptation. NATO, by contrast, moves at the speed of consensus among 32 capitals.

From recipient to pace-setter

The shift in Zaluzhnyi's language reflects a material change on the ground. In the early months of the invasion, Ukraine was a supplicant, dependent on Western artillery shells, air defence interceptors and intelligence. Today, Ukrainian defence firms produce drones, loitering munitions and missiles at a volume and iteration speed that Western defence ministries struggle to match. NATO exercises that include Ukrainian units have repeatedly shown allied officers tactics and drone employment concepts they had not anticipated.

The alliance's own language has begun to shift. At the Ankara summit last month, NATO's 32 leaders declared in a joint statement that "Ukraine contributes to transatlantic security." The phrasing is careful, contribution, not membership, but it acknowledges a reality that the alliance's bureaucratic machinery has not yet absorbed: Ukraine is now a net exporter of operational experience.

The membership stalemate

Ukraine's frustration with the membership process is not new. The 2008 Bucharest summit promised that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join. Eighteen years later, the door remains closed. The United States, Germany and several other allies have consistently opposed opening accession talks while the war continues, arguing that Article 5 obligations would draw the alliance into direct conflict with Russia. Zaluzhnyi's assessment is that this opposition is structural, not situational.

NATO declined to comment on Zaluzhnyi's remarks, pointing instead to Secretary General Mark Rutte's statement in June that Ukraine remains on an "irreversible path" to membership. The formula is familiar: a political commitment that requires no near-term action. For Kyiv, the gap between rhetoric and reality has widened to the point where a former commander-in-chief now treats the promise as a distraction.

Alternative alignments

If NATO membership is off the table, Zaluzhnyi argues, Ukraine must build security through other frameworks. He cited the Joint Expeditionary Force, a ten-nation grouping led by the United Kingdom and comprising mainly Nordic and Baltic states, established in 2014 to complement NATO. The JEF operates with a lower political threshold for deployment and has already conducted joint exercises with Ukrainian forces.

"Most likely, we will talk about a European military security bloc," Zaluzhnyi added. The idea of a European defence arrangement distinct from NATO has circulated in Paris, Berlin and Brussels for years, but it has gained urgency as the United States signals a strategic pivot toward the Indo-Pacific. A bloc that includes Ukraine would invert the traditional hierarchy: the country once seen as a security consumer would become a core capability provider.

The political dimension

Zaluzhnyi's intervention carries domestic political weight. He was dismissed as commander-in-chief by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February 2024, a move that surprised many inside the military and sparked speculation about a rift between the two men. Since his appointment as ambassador to London, Zaluzhnyi has maintained a low public profile. His decision to speak so candidly to the ambassadorial corps, a forum that guarantees leakage, suggests a calculated return to the public arena.

Allies and rivals alike in Kyiv read the remarks as a signal of intent. Zaluzhnyi remains popular among serving officers and veterans. His critique of NATO resonates with a military that feels its sacrifices have earned a seat at the table it will never be offered. Whether he translates that capital into a formal political role remains uncertain, but the ambassadorial corps is not a typical posting for a retired general with no political ambition.

What this means for European security

The practical consequences of Zaluzhnyi's assessment extend beyond Ukraine. If the country that has fought the largest land war in Europe since 1945 concludes that NATO is structurally incapable of integrating it, other frontline states, Poland, the Baltic republics, Finland, will draw their own conclusions. The Joint Expeditionary Force, the Nordic defence cooperation framework (NORDEFCO), and the various bilateral security guarantees signed with Kyiv since 2024 begin to look less like supplements to NATO and more like the scaffolding of a parallel architecture.

European defence industrial policy, currently organised around the European Defence Fund and the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) framework, has struggled to match the speed of Ukrainian procurement. Ukrainian firms iterate drone designs in weeks; European programmes measure cycles in years. Zaluzhnyi's implication is clear: any European security bloc that excludes Ukraine's industrial base will be weaker for it.