BRUSSELS, June 11. /TASS/. The leaders of 30 NATO member countries will confirm a potential opportunity for Ukraine to join the alliance at the June 14 summit in Brussels. However, they will not discuss either the prospects for providing a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine or any specific timeframes for its possible accession to the alliance, a European diplomatic source told TASS on Friday.
"The MAP for Ukraine is not on the agenda of the summit. The alliance’s leaders will confirm that the decisions of the [2008] Bucharest summit remain in force, as well as NATO’s commitment to the open door policy and the North Atlantic perspective for Ukraine and Georgia. The specific timeframes will depend on these countries’ compliance with all NATO criteria," he noted. "The summit will also note the importance of cooperation with our valuable partners, Georgia and Ukraine, and support the process of reforms and the fight against corruption in these states."
Responding to the question about the prospects for Kiev and Tbilisi to join NATO under the current circumstances, the diplomat explained, "The North Atlantic Alliance is defensive. It was created on the basis of the collective defense principle, which states that an attack on one of the NATO members is automatically considered to be an aggression against all allies (the alliance’s members — TASS). In order to join [the alliance], Ukraine and Georgia must achieve the resolution of their territorial disputes with Russia, because otherwise, their accession would put the alliance on the brink of a military conflict with Russia, in actual fact, a world war."
At the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, the leaders of the alliance refused to provide Membership Action Plans to Ukraine and Georgia, but made a political statement saying that Kiev and Tbilisi will eventually be able to join the alliance when they meet all membership criteria. In August 2008, Dmitry Rogozin, who was at that time Russia’s Ambassador to NATO, expressed the opinion that the summit’s decision had actually prompted Georgia’s leadership to start military aggression against South Ossetia on August 8, 2008.
US and NATO diplomats made at clear at that time that Georgia had no real prospects for NATO membership until the frozen conflicts on its soil were resolved. At the same time, NATO provided intensive military assistance to Georgia to bring its army closer to the alliance’s standards.
NATO summit in Brussels
The NATO summit, which will be held in Brussels on June 14 with the participation of US President Joe Biden, will last one day. It will consist of only one working session that will last approximately 2.5 hours. NATO summits usually last two days and include 3-4 working sessions on various issues. On the second day, the alliance’s leaders traditionally hold one of the sessions with the leaders of the NATO partner countries. However, there will be no such session this year, so the partner countries, including Ukraine and Georgia, have not been invited to Brussels.