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Photo from Ukrinform – UATV
NATO has granted Ukraine with the status of “aspirant country” on March 9, reported Yevropeiska Pravda.
“Currently, four partner countries have declared their aspirations to NATO membership: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Ukraine. Countries that have declared an interest in joining the alliance are initially invited to engage in an intensified dialogue with NATO about their membership aspirations and related reforms,” the statement said.
Until now, NATO refused to formally recognize Ukraine as an “aspirant country.”
On the official NATO website, it is mentioned that the Ukrainian parliament voted to join NATO and has made this their foreign policy objective. Ukraine has even passed a bill to amend its laws on national security, and internal and foreign policies on June 8, 2017.
Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, explained that talks on this issue with the NATO Deputy Secretary General, Rose Gottemoeller, took place on March 9. Following these talks, NATO agreed to recognize Ukraine’s aspirations.
“Membership to NATO is still a long way away. We have a lot of internal work, but we will succeed if we change the country in accordance with democratic, social, economic, political and, of course, military principles and approaches of NATO,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
