TBILISI, August 4. /TASS/. NATO has been deceiving both Georgia and Ukraine for years by promising to admit them into the alliance, while in fact it never planned to do so, Tbilisi Mayor and secretary general of the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party Kakha Kaladze said.

"Throughout all these years, countries like Georgia and Ukraine have been deceived that NATO’s door is open for them. But we understand the real state of things. In fact, they no longer hesitate to openly state that this is actually impossible and out of the question," he told journalists.

Tornike Pagava, deputy head of Georgia’s parliament committee on integration with Europe, in turn, noted that Tbilisi will have to shift to a multipronged policy if NATO ultimately refuses to admit it.

"NATO countries, including France and Britain, say that NATO is not planning to expand eastward. If NATO is not ready for this, we will have to pursue a multi-vector policy," he said.

Earlier, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to London and former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, dismissed talk about Ukraine’s potential NATO membership as "fairy tales." In his words, he personally worked for 12 years to ensure that Ukraine adopted NATO standards, and every year he heard "fairy tales" that his country was about to join the alliance. Ukraine will never become part of the North Atlantic alliance, he argued.

Since the late 1990s, Georgia has been cooperating with NATO under the alliance’s programs. At a summit in Prague in November 2002, the then Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze, officially announced his country’s intention to join NATO. The next president, Mikhail Saakashvili, reaffirmed these plans. The government that came to power after the Georgian Dream coalition’s win in October 2012, continues the NATO-wards course, stating, however, that it saw it as its mission to gradually normalize relations with Russia, "not to the prejudice of Georgia’s territorial integrity."