Should Ukraine show more ‘gratitude’?

Ben Wallace thinks Ukraine needs to be careful. The West has used a whole load of political energy this week to try and bring Ukraine closer to Nato, and its government’s response has been a bit unthankful. ‘There is a slight word of caution here,’ Wallace told a gaggle of reporters this morning, on the sidelines of the Nato summit in Vilnius, ‘which is that whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude.’ 

His comments come after Volodymyr Zelensky fumed on Tuesday that it was ‘absurd’ of Nato to not set a timeframe for when his country would become a member of the alliance. ‘Uncertainty is weakness’, he wrote on Twitter. Nato was about to release a communique saying it would allow Ukraine to join ‘when allies agree and conditions are met’. Zelensky had wanted an immediate invitation for Ukraine to become a member of the alliance, and had wanted to know exactly when that invitation could be redeemed.