WASHINGTON — Concerned about the potential for a change in U.S. leadership after the next presidential election, a visiting delegation of Eastern European lawmakers this week called on the Biden administration and Congress to move this year to bring Ukraine into NATO.
Ahead of the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius this summer, a faction of member states, led by the Baltic countries and Poland, is campaigning for the gathering to be used to begin the official process of admitting Ukraine to the Western military alliance.
“This is it. This is the year when all stars are aligning,” said Žygimantas Pavilionis, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, at a Wednesday roundtable with journalists in Washington. “We have bipartisan unity on freedom, democracy, and victory of Ukrainians, on our values. We have huge strategic unity of Europeans, who recognized American leadership. So let’s do it like we did it in times of (Ronald) Reagan.”
