Ukraine–NATO relations

Relations between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1991. Ukraine applied to integrate with a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country closer to Russia, was elected President. Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity. The interim Yatsenyuk Government initially said that it had no plans to join NATO. However, following the Russian annexation of Crimea and Russian military support for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Second Yatsenyuk Government made joining NATO a priority. In February 2019, the Ukrainian parliament voted to amend the Constitution of Ukraine to state Ukraine's goal of NATO and European Union membership.

At the June 2021 Brussels summit, NATO leaders reiterated the decision taken at the 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine would eventually become a NATO member with the MAP as an integral part of the process, and Ukraine's right to determine its future and foreign policy without outside interference. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also stressed that Russia will not be able to veto Ukraine's accession to NATO "as we will not return to the era of spheres of interest, when large countries decide what smaller ones should do." Before further actions on NATO membership were taken, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Polls conducted between 2005 and 2013 found low support among Ukrainians for NATO membership. However, since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, Ukrainian public support for NATO membership has risen greatly. Since June 2014, polls showed that about 50% of those asked supported Ukrainian NATO membership. A 2017 poll found that some 69% of Ukrainians wanted to join NATO, compared to 28% in 2012 when Yanukovych was in power. On 30 September 2022, Ukraine formally applied to join NATO, following Russia's annexation of Southern and Eastern Ukraine.