At the NATO May 18-20 foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Ukraine has moved down the list of priorities, certainly compared to the Dec. 1-3, 2014, session that I attended.

And NATO officials representing the political-military alliance’s 28 nations are determined to “double-down” on the status quo – the current policy that has not brought Russia any closer to respecting international law anywhere, but especially in Ukraine.

“The U.S. position remains that the most effective support we can give Ukraine comes in the following forms: So first of all, unquestioned political support; unquestioned support for continuing the sanctions regime, alongside the European Union; and the kind of training and advisory support that were given to Ukrainian forces,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute told the Kyiv Post during a May 18 press conference. “Our sense is that those are the high payoff targets in terms of U.S. support to Ukraine and that process is continuing almost non-stop, day to day.”

Lute – a retired Army lieutenant general – is a direct and experienced diplomat, but he is hewing to the failing policy.

His answers came in response to my question about whether the time has come to arm Ukraine and to impose a timeline, coupled with tougher sanctions as penalties, the longer that Russia refuses to meet the basic pre-conditions of the February 2015 Minsk peace agreements: 1. Cease-fire; 2. Withdrawal of weapons; 3. Return of eastern border control to Ukraine.

The answers: No to weapons (as U.S. President Barack Obama has made abundantly clear) and Lute isn’t aware of any talk to impose a timeline and stricter sanctions on Russia.

“I am not aware of a process that features imposing timelines, deadlines,” Lute said. “We still believe that Minsk may not be the perfect path to a political resolution, but it’s the path we’ve got and it is the path that we’re sticking with and we’re committed to.”

He then came close to parroting the false moral equivalencies in the West that blame Ukraine, the victim, in equal parts with Russia, the aggressor, for the failure of Minsk.

“There are substantial obstacles along that path. You mentioned some of the obstacles with regard to the security provisions in Minsk. So cease-fire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, eventual controlling again of the border by Ukrainian forces,” Lute said. “But there are substantial political obstacles as well. On both sides.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that one of the upcoming NATO Warsaw Summit’s main themes in July is “how best to project stability beyond our borders, because we know that when our neighbors are more stable, we are more secure.”

He talked about reinforcing and strengthening NATO presence in the Black Sea, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says has become a “Russian lake;” in the Baltics, the three NATO members that some think are vulnerable to Russian attack; in Turkey and in training forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But with respect to Russia, Stoltenberg admits that NATO is still trying to figure out how to respond to its aggressive behavior around the globe.

“This evening, we will review the state of our relations with Russia and our assistance to our eastern neighbors,” Stoltenberg said. “Our policy is clear. The two pillars of our engagement with Russia are defense and dialogue. Especially in times of tension, it is important to keep lines of dialogue open, and seek more transparency.”

The West will – later rather than sooner – realize there’s no point in engaging with Putin’s xenophobic and aggressive kleptocracy. Containment and tougher sanctions are only routes that will work. I would add arming Ukraine, but that issue appears dead for as long as Obama is in the White House.

As far as strengthening the ability of non-NATO neighbors to defend themselves, NATO is coming up short. In 2014, NATO set up four trust funds to specifically help Ukraine in four areas: C4 (command, control, communications and computers), logistics and standardization, cyber defense, training for military career transition and medical rehabilitation.

The idea is that individual nations would contribute to these funds.

According to the latest April fact sheet from NATO:

C4 (command, control, communications and computers) has received 1.5 million euros out of a budgeted 1.7 million euros;

logistics and standardization has received 1.3 million euros out of a budgeted 4.1 million euros;

cyber defense has received nearly 1 million euros, more than budgeted; and

Money for retraining military has reached its 435,000 euros budget while medical rehabilitation is short – receiving only 188,000 euros out of 2.25 million euros budgets.

That’s less than 5 million euros altogether, not an eye-popping sum of money for 28 member nations to give for Ukraine.

But the most obvious sign that Ukraine is far behind in its goal of being ready to join NATO by 2020 is being delivered by Montenegro.

NATO was set to take the “historic step” of signing an accession protocol with Montenegro to make the nation the alliance’s 29th member, if the other 28 nations agree.

As far back as 2009, NATO invited Montenegro to join the membership action plan, a pre-condition to membership that has not been offered to Ukraine. Under the plan, NATO helps to prepare a nation for prospective membership with advice, assistance and practical support. Even still, it took the tiny Balkan country of Montenegro, with only 600,000 people, seven years to advance to membership.

The only other membership action plan participants currently are Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Ukraine and NATO ties are, nonetheless, growing and some think the nation’s participation in the alliance’s annual national program is as good as a membership action plan.

We’ll see. But given the current political and military situation, it is hard to imagine how Ukraine will be anywhere close to NATO-ready by 2020, the stated goal since the nation in 2014 abandoned its non-aligned status in the wake of Russia’s illegal takeover of Crimea and the Kremlin’s ongoing war against the eastern Donbas.

Editor’s Note: Kyiv Post participation in the NATO foreign ministers’ conference in Brussels was paid for by NATO’s public diplomacy division, which exercises no control over the newspaper’s coverage.