This article describes how Ukraine is applying for NATO membership at a time when the European security architecture is becoming more fragmented. Specifically, as much as NATO continues to provide a coherent, multilateral framework that organises European security relations, various bilateral and ‘minilateral’ security formats have proliferated across the continent, while different members of this alliance system have come to prioritise certain defence ties over others. Paradoxically, this fragmentation allows Ukraine to pursue additional avenues through which it can embed itself in the Euro-Atlantic security community.
Despite the multilateral coherence that NATO offers, this military alliance lives side-by-side with a suite of other security arrangements that focus to some extent on security and defence policy.
