By Steve Holland, Andrew Gray, John Irish and Sabine Siebold
VILNIUS (Reuters) -President Joe&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;accused Russian President Vladimir&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;of having a "craven lust for land and power" at the end of a&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;summit on Wednesday where&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;won new&nbsp;security&nbsp;assurances&nbsp;from the U.S. and its&nbsp;allies&nbsp;for its defence against Moscow.
Members of the world's most powerful military bloc&nbsp;offered the prospect of long-term protection a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy decried as "absurd" a refusal to&nbsp;offer&nbsp;an invitation or timetable for&nbsp;Ukraine's entry into&nbsp;NATO.
Ukraine&nbsp;has been pushing for rapid membership while fighting a Russian invasion unleashed in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.
Instead, a declaration by the G7 group of the world's most industrialised countries launched a framework for bilateral negotiations to provide military and financial support, intelligence sharing and a promise of immediate steps if Russia should attack again.
"Our support will last long into the future. It's a powerful statement of our commitment to&nbsp;Ukraine,"&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said alongside Zelenskiy and leaders of the G7, which is made up of the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the end of the two-day meeting on Russia's doorstep,&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;had badly underestimated the resolve of the U.S.-led military alliance.
"NATO&nbsp;is stronger, more energized and yes, more united than ever in its history. Indeed, more vital to our shared future. It didn't happen by accident. It wasn't inevitable,"&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said.
"When&nbsp;Putin, and his craven lust for land and power, unleashed his brutal war on&nbsp;Ukraine, he was betting&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;would break apart ... But he thought wrong."
Swallowing his disappointment over the lack of a membership timetable, Zelenskiy hailed&nbsp;NATO's "practical and unprecedented support for&nbsp;Ukraine" and said that at the summit&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;had obtained "unambiguous clarity that&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;will be in&nbsp;NATO".
He tweeted: "I believe we will be in&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;once the&nbsp;security&nbsp;situation stabilises. Put simply, when the war is over,&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;will be invited into&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;and&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;will clearly become a member of the Alliance. I felt no thoughts of any other sort."
At a meeting with Zelenskiy,&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;promised him the U.S. was doing everything it could to meet&nbsp;Ukraine's needs and acknowledged Zelenskiy's frustration about&nbsp;the scale and speed of support.
"Your resilience and your resolve has been a model for the whole world to see,"&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said. "I look forward to the day when we're having the meeting celebrating your official, official membership in&nbsp;NATO."
"The bad news for you is, we're not going anywhere. You're stuck with us,"&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;joked, prompting laughter from Zelenskiy.
U.S. national&nbsp;security&nbsp;adviser Jake Sullivan had said&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;would discuss the issue of long-range missiles with Zelenskiy when they met.
Speaking to reporters later,&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said: "One thing Zelenskiy understands now is that whether or not he's in&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;now is not relevant" as long as he has the commitments that have been made at the summit. "He's not concerned about&nbsp;that now."
Zelenskiy told&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;he wanted to thank "all Americans" for the billions of dollars in aid his country had received.
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said he had told&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;that its international&nbsp;allies&nbsp;were "not Amazon" and Kyiv needed to show gratitude for weapons donations to persuade Western politicians to give more.
Zelenskiy said: "We were always grateful to the UK, prime ministers and the minister of defence because the people are always supporting us."
Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. have been negotiating with Kyiv for weeks over a broad international framework of support, encompassing modern advanced military equipment such as fighter jets, training, intelligence-sharing and cyberdefence.
In return&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;would pledge better governance, including through judicial and economic reforms and enhanced transparency.
The first sitting of a new&nbsp;NATO-Ukraine&nbsp;Council was also held on Wednesday, a format designed to tighten cooperation between Kyiv and the 31-nation alliance.
'POTENTIALLY VERY DANGEROUS'
NATO&nbsp;is built around mutual&nbsp;security&nbsp;guarantees whereby an attack on one is an attack on all, and it has carefully avoided extending any firm military commitments to&nbsp;Ukraine, worried it would risk taking it closer to a full-on war with Russia.
Ukraine&nbsp;has been wary of any less-binding&nbsp;security&nbsp;"assurances", given Russia's invasion already trampled the so-called Budapest Memorandum under which international powers committed to keeping the country safe in exchange for Kyiv giving up its Soviet-era nuclear arms.
Speaking earlier alongside Zelenskiy,&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;was closer to the alliance than ever before, and brushed aside new warnings from Russia about&nbsp;the consequences of supporting&nbsp;Ukraine.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the&nbsp;security&nbsp;arrangements for&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;were not designed to be a substitute for full&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;membership and said the commitments at the summit marked a high point for the West's support for Kyiv.
Russia, which says&nbsp;NATO's eastward expansion is an existential threat to its own&nbsp;security, swiftly lashed&nbsp;out.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was "potentially very dangerous" for the West to give&nbsp;Ukraine&nbsp;security&nbsp;guarantees.
The Russian foreign ministry said the summit showed that&nbsp;NATO&nbsp;was reverting to "Cold War schemes" and added that it would respond "in a timely and appropriate manner, using all means and methods at our disposal."
(Reporting by John Irish, Steve Holland, Justyna Pawlak, Sabine Siebold, Andrew Gray, and Max Hunder, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska, Matthias Williams and William Maclean; Editing by Alex Richardson, Howard Goller and Rosalba O'Brien)

you might like

NATO allies offer Ukraine security assurances as Biden hits out at 'craven' Putin