At Bucharest in April 2008, Radek Sikorski personally backed Ukraine’s NATO Membership Action Plan, framing Ukraine as a security contributor rather than a supplicant. Two decades later, his argument has hardened into a warning: Europe must treat postwar Ukraine as an active military power, not a ward holding worthless paper guarantees.
The Failed Guarantees Ukraine Already Holds
Ukraine already holds Western security guarantees from the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed in the Pataki Hall of the Hungarian parliament by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia. It also holds a Russian guarantee twice over: the same memorandum plus a border treaty that Vladimir Putin signed and the Russian Duma ratified.
Those guarantees failed because they were never credible. The memorandum’s signatories promised to respect Ukraine’s existing borders and refrain from economic coercion. Yet Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched a full invasion in 2022 while the Western signatories offered no military response. Ukraine is therefore not a country lacking paper commitments. This country has already tested the exact model of passive guarantees Europe now debates offering again.
Nothing is more dangerous in international affairs than a non-credible security guarantee.
Ukraine as a Security Provider, Not a Recipient
At the Bucharest summit in April 2008, George W. Bush pushed Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy to relent, but the summit denied Kyiv and Tbilisi the MAP. Still, Sikorski argued that Ukraine was already resisting Russian imperialism on Europe’s eastern flank. Its army, intelligence, and defense industry would strengthen the Alliance.
He repeated that logic in Kyiv in September 2026. A postwar Ukraine would be a major exporter of military technology. European officers would train in Ukrainian academies. In 2008 he saw Ukrainian membership as a way to strengthen NATO’s capabilities. After victory, Sikorski expects Ukraine to become an active security provider, not a ward.
The Threat to Western Europe Is Already Real
When Russian operatives placed explosives in DHL parcels bound for Leipzig in July 2024, the threat to Western Europe stopped being theoretical. A plot to assassinate Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger surfaced the same month. Ukraine’s armed forces have spent three years degrading the Russian military capacity that produced those operations.
Every air-defense interception over Kyiv reduces the force Moscow can project toward Berlin, Warsaw, or the Baltic states. So does every strike on a Russian logistics hub near Belgorod. So does every square kilometer retaken in the Donbas. Sikorski, speaking in Kyiv in September 2026, put it bluntly: Russia has proven through attacks on Germany that it threatens all of Europe, not only its eastern edge.
What Ukraine Will Export After Victory
After victory, Ukraine will not leave Europe guessing how its arsenal worked. The same plants that scaled FPV drone production from dozens to over one million units a year will export strike UAVs to EU militaries, along with electronic warfare suites and counter-battery software.
Battle-tested instructors will teach:
- River crossings under artillery fire
- Drone swarm coordination
- The integration of commercial satellite feeds into battalion command posts
Kyiv’s defense industry is already hardened by Russian missile barrages. It will sell systems proven against jamming, decoys, and hypersonic strikes. Sikorski’s point is blunt: the fastest way to bind Ukraine into Europe’s security structure is to let it win, then buy what it learned.