NATO leaders intend to invite Ukraine into the trans-Atlantic alliance after Kyiv regains control of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, amid an unfolding dispute about the alliance's ambiguous commitment to Ukraine's eventual membership.

“My understanding is that [conditions will be met] when it will be secure on our land, on our territory,” he told reporters Wednesday.

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Zelensky gestured towards that prospect one day after the alliance leaders unveiled a communique that offered a vague assurance that Ukraine would be invited “when Allies agree and conditions are met.” NATO officials hailed the document as “stronger than any” previous declaration, but Ukrainian leaders were not satisfied.

“We are happy to see a will to consider invitation, but we are sad to see the absence of a clear timeline as to when Ukraine will be extended a NATO membership invitation,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a U.S.-funded outlet “We have a very positive paragraph [in the final statement] followed by another which amounts to a spoonful of tar that spoils the barrel of honey.”

The NATO communique and arms deliveries were reinforced by a parallel statement from the G-7 bloc of the world's seven largest industrialized democracies — a group that includes Japan alongside the United States and five other NATO member-states.

"We will each work with Ukraine on specific, bilateral, long-term security commitments and arrangements [toward] ensuring a sustainable force capable of defending Ukraine now and deterring Russian aggression in the future," the G-7 announced. "Other countries that wish to contribute to this effort to ensure a free, strong, independent, and sovereign Ukraine may join this Joint Declaration at any time."

President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials defended the NATO communique on the grounds that Ukraine cannot join the alliance while in an active war with Russia.

“There was broad consensus in the alliance that bringing Ukraine into NATO now in the middle of the war would mean NATO would be at war with Russia,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday during an appearance at the NATO Public Forum on the sidelines of the summit. “And I think, across the Alliance, there was a view that NATO ending up in a war with Russia at this moment doesn't make sense.”

Zelensky dismissed that line of argument, saying that Kyiv sought not immediate membership but a strong “signal” that it would be admitted at an appropriate time.

“We are civilized and adequate people,” Zelensky, who also met with Biden in Vilnius, Lithuania, told reporters during a press conference. “Ukraine is fighting and it truly understands that Ukraine cannot be a member nation to NATO as long as the war continues on our territory, this is absolutely clear. But the signals are important.”

Zelensky’s comments were just one component of a debate that continued on the margins of the summit in Vilnius, even as Ukrainian officials and NATO allies sought to close ranks in the face of Russia’s invasion.

“The message from this Summit and from NATO Allies, with new announcements of long-range cruise missiles, of more armored vehicles, with more advanced air defense systems, and training of the F-16 pilots, is that we support them to liberate land, so they will have a stronger hand at the negotiating table,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at his closing press conference. “That's what this is about. It's not about NATO negotiating on behalf of Ukraine.”

Stoltenberg offered that last assurance in response to the notion that “Ukraine's NATO membership would be a chip in a negotiation with Russia,” as a reporter put it. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin seemed to stoke that anxiety on Wednesday by confirming that he spoke with CIA Director Bill Burns in the context of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s brief uprising — a conversation that Naryshkin characterized as focused on “thinking, discussing what to do about Ukraine.”

Those misgivings led to a tense encounter between Sullivan and a prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption activist, Daria Kaleniuk, who pressed him for an accounting of U.S. decision-making that she can give her son when she returns to Kyiv.

“What should I tell my son — that President Biden and NATO didn't invite Ukraine to NATO because he's afraid of Russia?” Anti-Corruption Action Center executive director Daria Kaleniuk asked during Sullivan’s appearance at the NATO Public Forum. “Afraid of Russia losing? Afraid of Ukraine winning? Or, [perhaps] there are backchannel negotiations with [the] Kremlin, which is a terrorist organization ... Should I prepare my son to be a soldier and fight Russians when he will be 18 years [old], in seven years?”

Sullivan defused that emotionally-charged conceit with applause for Kaleniuk’s role as “a big champion” for Ukrainian democracy, as well as “the bravery and courage of every Ukrainian citizen” resisting Russian aggression, before reiterating Biden’s unwillingness to bring Ukraine into NATO during the war.

He also rebuked her for “conspiracy theorizing” about Biden’s motivations. “For us to be able to have the kind of honesty that was inherent in your question ... [it’s important that] certain insinuations or implications inherent in your question, which are not founded, get checked at the door,” Sullivan said. “And, you know, there has been a lot of conspiracy theorizing that simply is not based on any reality whatsoever.”

Kaleniuk’s question nonetheless reflected a widespread perception that Biden’s team is over-anxious about the ramifications of a Russian defeat in Ukraine, a reputation that has centered on Sullivan since the first weeks of the full-scale invasion.

“The problem is this irrational fear of Russia's collapse after Ukrainian victory,” Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, an arch-critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Tuesday at the NATO Public Forum. “That's a geopolitical nightmare, without having a comprehensive vision about what comes next in Russia ... So we’re not going to finish the war and also to offer some future for the whole region, not only for Ukraine.”

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Stoltenberg emphasized that the Vilnius communique marks the first time that NATO has even mentioned the possibility of an “invitation” for Ukraine. Kuleba acknowledged that the United States “played a decisive role to get the word ‘invitation’ into the final document,” but rejected Stoltenberg’s celebratory argument.

“Some say that we should be happy to see the words ‘invitation’ and ‘Ukraine’ side by side. Such [an] approach though is categorically unacceptable to us,” Kuleba said during the RFE/RL interview. “Our stance is that Ukraine has already met all the conditions needed to be invited to NATO. This is where our approaches differ. Theirs is that there are certain conditions that need to be met. We will work with allies to make sure all of this does not freeze in its tracks and keeps moving forward.”