It was 2008, on the eve of the Bucharest Summit, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization considered expanding by inviting new members from the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. André Glucksmann and I co-signed an open letter to the French president and the German chancellor urging them to hear the pleas of Ukraine, which had sought to protect itself from the Russian empire since it declared independence in 1918.

Seventeen years after its second emancipation in 1991, leaders in Kyiv saw no other path than this one: the Membership Action Plan, which would allow their nation one day to join NATO.