Abstract
The article examines the evolution of Ukraine’s state strategic narratives on NATO membership in 1991–2025. The relevance of the study stems from the fact that Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic course was shaped not only by defence reforms, diplomatic negotiations and NATO decisions, but also by the state’s capacity to consistently explain the purpose of membership, the security threat, national agency and the expected political outcome to domestic and external audiences. Drawing on strategic narrative theory, historical-political periodization, elements of discourse analysis of official documents, sociological measures of public reception and limited comparative contextualization, the article identifies five stages: inertial partnership without a coherent membership narrative; the declarative Euro-Atlantic turn of 2002–2010; non-alignment as a state counter-narrative in 2010–2014; return to NATO after Russia’s aggression in 2014; and wartime synchronization of the state narrative, public security experience and practical cooperation with NATO after 2022. The effectiveness of strategic communication is operationalized through narrative coherence, institutional continuity, societal reception, external resonance and policy conversion. The article argues that the weakness of Ukraine’s strategic communication before 2014 cannot be explained only by external information influence or the caution of NATO member states. Its internal cause was the inconsistency of the state narrative, which for a long time failed to connect systemic, identity and issue-policy levels of Euro-Atlantic explanation. After 2022, the narrative became more effective due to the convergence of political will, wartime experience, institutional irreversibility, public demand for collective security and NATO’s practical support; however, membership remains dependent on allied decisions and cannot be reduced to communication quality alone.
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