At the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11th, tensions were high as expectations from the leader of Ukraine were quelled with the assertion of more needed time and requirements for Ukraine’s NATO membership. Volodymyr Zelensky got huge support from adoring crowds and some concessions from the alliance’s leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who said Ukraine’s “rightful place” is within the NATO military alliance.

“Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” the leaders of the alliance declared in the summit’s final communique.

“We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree, and conditions are met.” Even with plenty of moral support from the North Atlantic Council of NATO, Zelenskyy was still unsatisfied with the lack of commitment from NATO whose conditions for membership he described as “vague” in his Twitter post preceding the NATO Summit in Vilnius.

In recent NEWS President Joe Biden told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that it was a “difficult decision” to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions for the first time, but that he was ultimately convinced to send the controversial weapons because Kyiv needs ammunition in its counteroffensive against Russia.

While Ukraine has munitions support of the United States to Ukraine, the decision to wait on Ukraine’s NATO membership is a strategic move to leave the door open for future negotiations with Russia in the future. Author John Deni stated that at the NATO Summit, “there was little significant movement on several key issues, leaving much on the table for the alliance’s 75th birthday summit next year in Washington, DC.”