Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna allows the opening of a "window of opportunities" for Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) before the end of the war.
She told about this in an interview with European Pravda, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
"At a certain moment, there may come a window of opportunities (for Ukraine to join NATO), perhaps even before the end of the war, when such a decision can be made. But I want to draw attention to the fact that Ukraine has already clearly and unequivocally declared many times its desire to become part of the alliance and today such decisions should be made in Brussels," she said.
The Vice Prime Minister denied that a country with occupied territories cannot become a member of NATO.
"Even Rasmussen, the former Secretary General of NATO (Anders Fogh Rasmussen), spoke a lot about it and he even has many formulas by which it can be implemented, which are absolutely justified," Stefanishyna emphasized.
However, according to the Vice Prime Minister, the alliance currently has nothing to offer Ukraine, as we sought to become a member of the organization in order to prevent war.
"We need to return to our reality. We sought to join NATO in order to become part of the collective security system, we believed that this could prevent war, prevent it. Today, there is a full-scale war on the territory of Ukraine. Almost the entire government spent the first month of the war in a bunker, working at the same table. Therefore, now the very desire to join NATO has a slightly different flavor, spirit. Today, NATO does not have much to offer us as an organization. We work more individually with allies, and the allies themselves are more inclined towards bilateral cooperation," Stefanishyna noted.
But, despite this, in her opinion, the issue of Ukraine's membership in NATO cannot be dismissed, because Ukraine is becoming stronger and will be a very strong ally.
At the same time, Ukraine is not ready to receive just the MAP (Membership Action Plan), but only directly the membership in the alliance itself.
"If Ukraine was offered the MAP by February 24, we would be maximally satisfied with this decision... Today, the proposal of the MAP within the framework of NATO is already equivalent to the decision of the Bucharest Summit of 2008... Only membership," Stefanishyna summed up.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, according to Zelenskyy, the declaration of the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 shows that the refusal to accept Ukraine into the alliance was hidden behind diplomatic wording. At the then summit, the issue of joining the MAP of Ukraine was on the agenda. According to some media reports, at this summit Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed the opinion to George Bush that "Ukraine is not even a state" and hinted that in the event of Ukraine's accession to NATO, Russia may begin invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
The USA said that Ukraine can "bypass" the MAP on the way to NATO, like Finland and Sweden.
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