For the first time in years, no one spent the run-up to a NATO summit arguing over whether to invite Ukraine. Ankara put Ukraine among its three central topics, alongside allied defence spending and the state of the Alliance’s defence industry.
In a conversation with Hanna Hopko on the podcast «Суб’єктивно, але правдиво» (Subjective but true), Sahaidachnyi Security Center Co-founder and Director Lesia Ogryzko sets out what the summit did produce, why the coming months matter more than the communiqué, and why Ukraine’s partners keep hesitating at the moment they are best placed to act.
Lesia Ogryzko points out that assistance to Ukraine counts towards the 5%, and Ukrainian producers are steadily becoming part of allied industry. Unlike previous years, no one spent the run-up arguing over whether to invite Ukraine at all, and President Zelenskyy’s invitation arrived well in advance.
The Ukrainian delegation travelled with one message on air defence. PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for Patriot systems are sitting in allied stockpiles now, while much of what Ukraine has been promised is scheduled for late 2026 and early 2027.
“Missiles are still there in storage. We need them now, not in six months and not in a year.”
Behind the hesitation, Lesia Ogryzko sees a familiar pattern. Bob Woodward’s The War records how, in 2022, Washington took fright at the prospect of a crushing Russian defeat and pushed Ukraine to postpone its counteroffensive to the summer of 2023, handing Russia more than six months to accumulate resources.
“Unfortunately, our American partners took fright at the prospect of a crushing defeat for Russia.”
The root of that incrementalism is the absence of a strategy for Russia itself. Whether to sit down with Moscow, whether to release one more weapons system — Lesia Ogryzko treats these as secondary to the question no one in the EU or NATO has answered: what happens to the post-Russian space, and what comes after Putin.
“The key question is: what is our strategy on Russia? Years go by, and we pay in human lives for the simple fact that this strategy does not exist.”
Lesia Ogryzko also emphasised that Ukraine has been building an asymmetric position of its own. Strikes on Russian refineries have proved more effective than any European sanctions package. Drone production and long-range capability have grown. Over recent months Ukraine has been killing Russians faster than Russia can recruit them, and in May it took back more territory than Russia captured — figures the President has been careful to describe as the arithmetic of a genocidal war rather than a source of pride.
Expert estimates give this window six to nine months, perhaps less. Lesia Ogryzko’s own approach, as she puts it, is “dream big — set ambitious goals, dream boldly, but stay a realist through all of it.”
The conversation closes on what Ukraine wants from that window: a seat at the table in the EU and NATO on equal terms, rather than an arrangement in which Ukraine remains a buffer zone whose services can be hired.
Listen to the full conversation on YouTube!