For twelve years a man built an army to NATO standards, listened to promises every year, and finally stood in front of his fellow diplomats and told them what he actually thinks. "Sadly, we will never get into NATO" - that is the line from Valerii Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of Ukraine's army, now ambassador in London.

He said it at a meeting of Ukrainian ambassadors in Kyiv, during a discussion on Euro-Atlantic integration. He was asked about Ukraine's role in the Joint Expeditionary Force, and he started with NATO. "I know NATO well. For around 12 years I personally worked on adopting NATO standards and every year I listened to stories about how we would soon become a member," he said.

Then came the part you rarely hear from a man with his record. According to Zaluzhny, the Alliance is still run on Second World War doctrines, and over the next 12 years it will not change enough to reach half of Russia's capabilities. That is not the line of a disappointed politician - it is the line of a man who led the biggest war in Europe since 1945 and knows what paper is worth against capacity.

The waiting room everyone in the Balkans knows

There is something painfully familiar in this story. Twelve years of reforms, alignments, standards, annual reports and annual promises of "soon". Who in the Balkans does not remember that scene? Macedonia waited two decades and in the end changed its constitutional name to get in. EU candidate status has dragged on so long that children born at the start of the process have since finished university and moved to Germany. The only difference is that Zaluzhny said out loud what diplomacy usually keeps behind closed doors.

But let us not misread him - Zaluzhny is not saying NATO is useless. On the contrary, he openly admits Ukraine needs the technologies member states have: air defence, space capabilities, modern military technology. So the problem is not that the Alliance has nothing to offer. The problem is that the door does not open.

If not NATO, then what?

Zaluzhny's answer is that Ukraine will most likely join the new European military and security blocs now taking shape. As a model he points to the Joint Expeditionary Force - a coalition of ten northern European countries led by Britain, created for rapid joint response in a crisis. The command structures have existed since 2015, though they are still not fully developed. Ukraine has already entered an enhanced partnership with that initiative.

There is one significant difference Zaluzhny does not hide: the JEF has no collective defence clause. No Article 5. So what Ukraine gets is speed and practical cooperation, but not the guarantee everyone wanted from NATO in the first place.

And that is the real question, the one that concerns us too. If the largest military force in Europe, one fighting on the ground, concludes that the collective security system will not admit it - what does that mean for the architecture in which the Balkans are also seeking their future? Are NATO and the EU still the reference point, or is Europe quietly starting to build something else, in parallel, with its own rules and no promises of "soon"?