NEW YORK, June 15. /TASS/. US President Joe Biden's remarks to the effect Ukraine should uproot corruption before it can hope for being admitted to NATO are quite telling, because the current US president worked on the Ukrainian track back during the Barack Obama administration and has in-depth knowledge of Kiev's problems, Professor and Chair at the Department of Political Science of Barnard College, Columbia University, Kimberly Marten, told TASS.
"In President Biden's words today, the question of Ukrainian membership 'remains to be seen.' Biden noted that Ukraine has not yet met NATO membership criteria, highlighting the need for Ukraine to clean up corruption in particular. When he was Vice President under President Barack Obama, Biden had overall responsibility for US-Ukrainian relations. That means he knows the issues well, so his noncommittal answer today is significant. But it's also significant that he added, 'we will do all we can to put Ukraine in a position to be able to continue to resist Russian physical aggression.' In other words, Ukraine doesn't have to be in NATO to get US support," Marten said.
For the time being, she went on to say, as follows "from the public reports of the NATO summit, nothing seems to have changed on the question of Ukrainian membership."
"It remains on the table, but there is no membership action plan yet. There's no indication that membership was a major point of discussion at the summit, and we know that Ukraine was disappointed not to have been invited to attend the meeting," Marten pointed out.
The participants in the June 14 NATO summit said that both Ukraine and Georgia might become the alliance's members at some future date. At the same time, the final communique said nothing either about the likely dates, when these two countries might be granted NATO membership, or about the chances of giving them membership action plans. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in recent months said that Kiev would like to see further progress on this issue. In particular, he believes that this is the right moment for giving Ukraine a membership action plan to be acted on to secure admission to the alliance.