The likely scenario involves NATO delaying a MAP invitation to Ukraine and Georgia, while reaffirming the alliance’s support for both countries’ integration bids.

“Most NATO members support MAP for Ukraine,” said Oleksandr Sushko, director of the Center for Peace, Conversion and Foreign Policy of Ukraine, a Kyiv-based think tank. “However, there has to be a consensus of all the member states.”

French and German leaders are leading the resistance to a Ukrainian MAP, in what some analysts are describing as the first time a non-NATO state, the Russian Federation, may impede a NATO decision through proxies, violating a key NATO principle of not giving veto influence to non-members.

“That principle could be breached for the first time in the alliance’s history, if Berlin and Paris lead an action to block the Georgian and Ukrainian MAPs at the Bucharest summit in deference to Russia’s opposition,” Vladimir Socor, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, wrote for the Eurasia Daily Monitor.

French and German leaders may advocate for creating a neutral zone between NATO and the Russian Federation, consisting of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, Socor reported.

Historically uneasy with confrontational US geopolitical moves, the French and German governments are concerned NATO invitations may worsen already tense relations with Russia, which strongly opposes the alliance’s expansion.

Europe is far more susceptible to Russian natural gas and oil prices than the US, receiving a quarter of its supply from Russia, which views Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as its rightful sphere of influence.

The Russian government has threatened consequences for Europe in case Ukraine is accepted to MAP, which could include military and economic measures, such as influencing gas and oil prices.

“Germany, at Russia’s behest, has led the way in mobilizing ‘old Europe’ to oppose NATO’s invitation to Ukraine into a MAP,” said Taras Kuzio, a visiting assistant professor of international affairs at The George Washington University.

Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow could point missiles at Ukraine if the latter joins NATO and hosts its military bases.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s incoming president whose inauguration is planned for May 7, is expected to continue Putin’s aggressive policy against eastward expansion of NATO.

In among his first foreign policy statements since his March 2 election, Medvedev told the Financial Times in an interview published March 24 that the majority of Ukrainians are against NATO membership according to polls, a point often repeated by Putin.

“We are not happy about the situation around Georgia and Ukraine,” Medvedev said. “We consider it extremely troublesome for the existing structure of European security ... No state can be pleased about having representatives of a military bloc to which it does not belong coming close to its borders.”

US President George W. Bush will pay his first official visit to Ukraine on the eve of the April 2 to 4 summit, a move intended to re-affirm American support for Ukraine’s NATO aspirations despite an impending membership deferment, experts said.

Along with the US, Canada and NATO’s Eastern European member-states, themselves former Warsaw Pact members wary of Russian foreign policy, also back Ukraine’s and Georgia’s aspirations.

Nine Eastern European members sent a joint, non-official letter to NATO headquarters asking the Alliance to give Ukraine and Georgia MAPs, news agencies reported on March 20, which was later confirmed by NATO officials. Canada joined the nine countries in the appeal.

“Yet, the United States’ persistence, and the general atmosphere around the issue, will foster reaching some compromise, in which some positive, though not final, decision will be offered,” said Oleksandr Derhachov, a political scientist at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Since no consensus is expected, NATO will likely come up with some alternative proposal, according to experts.

“At present, there are discussions on passing a positive decision, but conditionally positive,” Sushko said.

According to the neutral zone proposal, in exchange for NATO concessions, Russia would “help” in resolving the frozen conflicts, pledge to respect all three countries’ territorial integrity, and cooperate with the West on other security issues, Socor reported, citing reports in the French newspaper Le Monde.

NATO may ask Ukraine to take additional steps to gain a MAP, he said, yet the level of cooperation between NATO and Ukraine is so high that the relationship will look like it’s not progressing without the MAP.

“There is nowhere else for Ukraine to upgrade except to a MAP,” Kuzio said.

Ukraine’s leaders are also partly to blame, Sushko said, for pinning themselves into a corner by explicitly asking for their country to be accepted into a MAP at the Bucharest summit.

As a result, Ukraine left little latitude for NATO and itself, he said.