USA: Anders Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary general, asserted that some of the alliance's members might offer to send troops to Ukraine if the country is not given security guarantees on a wide range of issues at a future summit.

Ahead of the NATO leaders' meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month, according to Rasmussen, who advises Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and previously worked with Pyotr Poroshenko, Kiev should receive written guarantees from the West regarding intelligence sharing, the transfer of weapons, and joint military training.

"There is a clear possibility that some countries might take action individually," he said on Wednesday, according to The Guardian. "NATO cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine." 

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Rasmussen argued that foreign troop deployments would be legal under international law if Kiev requested them after touring Europe and the US in recent weeks to help mobilise military support for Ukraine.

Despite recently confirming that the summit would discuss some security guarantees, NATO's current secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, emphasised that only member states could receive full assurances. Although Kiev officially applied to join the bloc in September of last year after the bloc first promised to grant Ukraine membership back in 2008, not much has changed since then.

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Regarding Ukraine's membership in the alliance, a number of NATO members have stepped up their advocacy, pleading with other Western nations to lay out a clear path to accession. In a statement released earlier this week, a subset of NATO countries from Eastern Europe known as the "Bucharest Nine" urged the alliance to use the Vilnius meeting to "launch a new political track that will lead to Ukraine's membership in NATO" and to provide a "more robust, multi-year, and comprehensive support package."

Washington has frequently stated that Ukraine will eventually join the military alliance, but it has prioritised the current conflict with Russia in the hopes of resolving the membership issue in the future. Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, however, stated to The Guardian on Wednesday that officials are now "looking at an array of options to signal that Ukraine is advancing in its relationship with NATO," without going into further detail as to what that might entail.

Zelensky reportedly informed Western allies that he would not attend the summit in Lithuania in July unless the alliance provided Ukraine with "concrete" guarantees or a path towards full membership. Zelensky rejected any "substitute for NATO." 

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One of the reasons Russia began its military operation in the neighbouring country in February 2022 was because it saw the NATO alliance's continued eastward expansion as a threat to its security. The neutrality of Ukraine has been cited by Moscow as one of the essential requirements for a lasting peace