Contents tagged with NATO membership

  • Finland's leaders call for NATO membership 'without delay', Kremlin sees move as threat to Russia

    Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would see Finland’s accession to NATO as a threat and that the move would not contribute to more stability and more security in the world.

    Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) land border with Russia.

    Speaking after Finland’s top leaders announced they’re in favor of rapidly applying for NATO membership, Peskov told reporters, "as we have said many times before, NATO expansion does not make the world more stable and secure."

    Peskov noted …

  • Kyiv: Ukraine counts on US help with obtaining NATO membership

    Kyiv hopes that the position of the US on Ukraine's possible membership in NATO will be decisive in the course of discussions about Kyiv's Euro-Atlantic prospects with partner countries, said Vadim Prystayko, the head of the Mission of Ukraine to NATO during a conference in Kyiv, LB.ua news outlet reports.

    “In NATO, of course, all member states are equal. However, some states are more equal than others, as Orwell put it. We expect that if one of NATO leaders is inclined the way Mr. Bolton …

  • Poroshenko: NATO summit showed that Alliance’s doors are open to Ukraine

    The NATO meeting with Ukraine was accompanied by the universal recognition of its aspirations to membership, President Petro Poroshenko stated while commenting on the results of his participation in the NATO summit in Brussels, Radio Liberty reports.

    "Every leader of 19 member sates took the floor and stated that the support for Ukraine should mean the acceleration of Ukraine’s membership prospect. I believe that it demonstrates their attitude towards Ukraine and the policy of open doors," …

  • Estonian Defense Minister: Ukraine and Georgia should wait for the right moment to join NATO

    Estonian Minister of Defense, Jüri Luik, stated that Georgia and Ukraine should prepare for NATO membership and wait for the right moment, the ERR news agency reports.

    “I told my Georgian and Ukrainian colleagues that you should never give up,” Luik stated. “The best example is the membership of the Baltic countries. It was considered a miracle, but, nevertheless, it happened.”

    According to Luik, this became possible due to the sudden “affair” of former US President George Bush and Russian …

  • General Pavel: over the last 4 years Ukraine has come close to being part of NATO

    Ukraine has managed to significantly approach NATO member status over the last four years, as stated by Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Petr Pavel to DW.

    Responding to the question on what main problems Ukrainian Armed Forces face now, he said that he could not comment on internal decisions of partners but "Ukraine has already carried out impressive defense reforms and approached NATO more; but there is still work to do.”

    Ukraine’s stability is one of the main objectives of these …

  • Poroshenko: Ukraine will join NATO within the next decade

    President Petro Poroshenko said that Ukraine's goal is to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) within the next ten years.

    He spoke about this during an interview with Hamburger Abendblatt, a subsidiary of the German media company Funke Media Group.

    "We are working on NATO membership with particular perseverance. Our goal is to become a member of the Alliance within the next ten years," Poroshenko said.

    According to the President the Alliance "would become stronger …

  • NATO insists it has not changed policy towards Ukraine

    NATO headquarters says that recognition of Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations on the Alliance's website is only a reflection of reality, and does not mean that it is changing the policy of the bloc, as noted in an official statement by the Alliance headquarters, Evropeiska Pravda reports.

    "There has been no change in policy at NATO. NATO's policy remains the same. There has been a change in Ukraine's policy, which the website reflects. We simply amended the information of the website to …

  • Volker: Ukraine is still not ready for NATO

    US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker shared his opinions in Brussels on Saturday, March 10 on Ukraine’s readiness to join NATO. Volker emphasized that Ukraine should have but did not receive a NATO membership action plan or MAP back in 2008 at the Alliance summit in Bucharest. "The US advocated the granting of the MAP to Ukraine and Georgia, which would have been a right move, and which should have been done, because the MAP is not a guarantee of membership, it is an …

  • NATO recognizes Ukraine's aspirations for membership in the alliance

    NATO acknowledged Ukraine's desire to gain full membership in the organization, as noted on the Alliance’s website, in the section dedicated to the expansion of NATO.

    Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze wrote on Facebook that the site was updated on Friday evening after her conversation with NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller.

    "Thus, at last, in the evening, the NATO official website says that presently four countries, …

  • NATO explains why Ukraine cannot become a member of the Alliance

    In her speech at the Munich Security Conference, Deputy Secretary General of the Alliance, Rose Gottemoeller, insisted that Ukraine differs from other countries aspiring to NATO membership, Evropeyska Pravda reports.

    Rose Gottemoeller recalled that this year marks the tenth anniversary of the Bucharest Summit, where Kyiv was denied a Membership Action Plan, but at the same time, the Alliance decided that Ukraine would eventually become a NATO member.

    Since then, the Deputy Secretary General …