The United States and Germany have not changed their position on inviting Ukraine to join NATO, so this will not happen at the summit in Washington.

The New York Times noted that NATO was unwilling to accept a new member that would involve it in the largest ground war in Europe since 1945 through the Alliance's collective security pact.

The United States and Germany remain opposed to inviting Ukraine to join NATO at the Washington summit, as they were at last year's summit in Vilnius. The NYT noted that they even wanted the issue to be removed from the agenda in July, despite the fact that a similar process for Ukraine's EU membership was approved last winter.

As noted, the main efforts are now aimed at clearly defining the conditions that Ukraine must fulfil in order to start negotiations with NATO, but they have not yet progressed.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he had been "listening carefully" to his diplomatic counterparts discussing preparations for the summit in Washington this summer and how NATO might decide on Ukraine's place in the alliance and had been responding carefully.

"It is up to allies themselves to decide on the form and the content of the next step toward Ukraine’s membership in NATO. We will be looking forward to the outcome, but, of course, we believe that Ukraine deserves to be a member of NATO and that this should happen sooner rather than later," he said.

At the same time, NYT sources emphasised that "none of these things may matter by July" because of the ongoing war with Russia. The NYT stressed that the prospect of Ukraine's defeat in the conflict is becoming "all the more real".

"The situation on the ground may look a lot worse than it is today, and then the real question becomes, ‘How do we make sure that Russia doesn’t win?’" said Ivo H. Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO.

The North Atlantic Alliance sees firm steps by the Ukrainian authorities in implementing the adapted Annual National Programme (ANP), a reform plan for 2024 designed to bring Kyiv closer to NATO membership.

The adapted Annual National Programme became a tool for NATO to assess Ukraine's progress towards membership following the Vilnius Summit in July 2023. At that time, the Alliance decided to cancel one of the intermediate steps on this path – the submission of a Membership Action Plan (MAP).

In November 2023, Ukraine and NATO agreed to update the Annual National Programme to a conceptual document with a short list of reforms in the security, defence, anti-corruption and civil protection sectors.