NATO's history of running hot and cold on Ukraine is running cold again

There was a particularly telling moment at a bygone NATO summit about four years ago, which perfectly captured the sometimes capricious way the Western military alliance regards Ukraine.

The secretary general of the day, the often unflappable Jens Stoltenberg, was asked about the Eastern European country's long-standing bid to join the allies.

At that point, Ukraine had been waiting more than a dozen years for admission.

And much like the first signs of an approaching storm, there had been an ominous buildup of Russian forces on the border the previous spring.

Stoltenberg was asked if he foresaw any scenario under which Ukraine would join NATO unchallenged by Russia. (Full disclosure: I am the one who asked the question).

It was — perhaps — sadly prescient.

Stoltenberg, however, waved it off.

Each nation has the right to pick and choose its alliances and associations, he responded.

The point — then and now — is that Ukraine had chosen. It had picked a side and charted its own course. It had thrown its lot in with allies in 2008 in the belief, perhaps misguided, that the Western promise of fairness and collective security was their future.

And yet, then — as now — Ukraine was left waiting outside the door.

At this week's NATO summit, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — whose every word leaders hung on during the 2022 and 2023 gatherings — was relegated to the sidelines and the dining hall as Western leaders discussed his country's fate behind closed doors.

In fairness, Zelenskky did get face time with major leaders, including the American president, Donald Trump.

Through that meeting, he secured additional, urgently needed U.S. Patriot missile battery systems.

There was a collective guarantee of additional aid worth 35 billion euros from European allied countries. Canada — at the G7 the week before — promised an additional $4.3 billion.

The summit ended with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who is rarely offside with the Trump administration these days, stating that Ukraine's path to join NATO, as declared at the 2023 Vilnius summit, is still "irreversible."

Maybe he didn't get Washington's memo.

It was clear the summit was tailored for Trump — a short, narrowly focused agenda aimed at getting allies to show him the money on defence spending. Ukraine was a necessary, but unpleasant, afterthought.

Canada, the original sponsor of Ukraine's membership in 2008, went along — seemingly reluctantly.

"We would have preferred, Canada would have preferred a special session with NATO, with Ukraine, absolutely," Prime Minister Mark Carney told journalists at the conclusion of the summit on Wednesday,

While Carney said he raised several points related to Ukraine during the closed-door leaders' meeting, he clarified most of the collective agenda discussed had nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with the concerns of other allies. He used the Arctic as an illustration of something Zelenskyy might not care about.

The prime minister's remarks shed light on what is essentially the fundamental divide between Europe and the United States (at least this iteration under the Trump administration) over Ukraine.

"The U.S. does not see Ukrainian security as essential to European security, and our European allies do," former U.S. ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker told a recent panel organized by the Center for European Policy Analysis.

The Europeans, he said, "feel that if Putin is allowed to prevail in Ukraine — or if Ukraine does not survive as a sovereign, independent state — they are at risk."

WATCH | Ukrainian describes aftermath of bombing:

Valeriy Mankuta, a construction worker in Ukraine's capital, told journalists he was sleeping when he felt a blast, waking up in rubble with a giant slab overhead. The blast was one of many overnight, as Russia launched another barrage of strikes on Ukraine.

That was implicit in Rutte's enthusiastic reassurance about Ukraine's membership bid, even though it risked the ire of Trump.

"They see the need to support Ukraine as integral to our security through NATO. The U.S. simply doesn't see it that way," said Volker.

The U.S. "thinks NATO is NATO. You do Article Five protection for NATO members, and the more that is done by our European allies themselves the better," he said. "And Ukraine, it's unfortunate. It's a war."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made Ukraine's potential membership in NATO a key red line for allies, insisting that his neighbour be barred from entering the Western alliance — forever.

Trump in his pursuit of some kind of Nobel Peace Prize bought into the argument and made criticism of Moscow verboten — either at NATO or the G7.

As late as a month ago, Trump's envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Russia's concern over the eastward enlargement of NATO was fair.

Bullocks, says NATO's former secretary general Lord George Robertson.

"I had nine meetings with Vladimir Putin during my time as secretary general," said Robertson, who led NATO from 1999 to 2003, as Putin came to power and the alliance began its expansion to include former Eastern Bloc countries.

"At no point did he complain about NATO enlargement. Not at all."

Robertson, in a recent interview with CBC News, describes Putin's NATO argument as "retroactive justification" for going to war against his neighbours (Russia also invaded Georgia in 2008).

Forgotten in the wash of history, the flood of misinformation, the recent clash of egos, the rush to rearm and the massaging of policy points is an agreement signed by Putin and allied leaders — including U.S. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien — which established the now-defunct NATO-Russia Council in 2002.

"Vladimir Putin put his signature on the Rome Declaration, which endorsed the NATO-Russia Founding Act (1997) and the guarantee of territorial integrity of all nations in Europe," said Robertson. "His signature is on it with mine."

The date and the event is burned into his memory.

"May 20, 2002, the same day that he stood beside me at the press conference and said that Ukraine is a sovereign, independent nation, a state which will make its own decisions about peace and security," Robertson said.

"And now the same man says Ukraine is not a nation and somehow, violently, it has to be absorbed inside his concept of a new Russia."

The former secretary general, during his interview, confessed to often carrying around a copy of the more than two-decade-old declaration in his suit pocket.

The document, for Robertson, is an ever-present reminder of Putin's betrayal — perhaps even a personal keepsake of a crown achievement that history has turned to dust.

When Ukrainians look at the same piece of paper, however, they not only see betrayal, but also another capricious moment in time.