NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says there are already a lot of tools in place to help Ukraine move toward Euro-Atlantic integration.
At the same time, speaking at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, Stoltenberg avoided a direct answer to a question on the possibility for Ukraine to achieve a Membership Action Plan as early as this year.
Asked whether Ukraine this year could expect to be accepted to the NATO Enhanced Opportunity Program or to receive the Membership Action Plan, as well as how the result of the upcoming presidential elections could influence the realization of said goals, Stoltenberg said that there already "many different tools: Annual National Program, we have the NATO-Ukraine Commission, we have different partnerships, activities."
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"So we have already in place a lot of tools that can be used to strengthen our partnership and help Ukraine move towards a Euro-Atlantic integration," said the NATO Secretary General.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on February 22, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko stated that he was awaiting the announcement of a NATO Membership Action Plan with a specific date when Ukraine could become the 31st member of the Alliance.
On March 10, 2018, Poroshenko declared that the decision on raising the level of Ukraine’s ambitions regarding the Alliance was a recognition of the actual state of relations between Ukraine and NATO. According to the president, the next goal of Ukraine is the Membership Action Plan. He then reported that in a letter to Stoltenberg of February 2018, he officially stated Ukraine’s will to become a member of the Alliance. NATO took note of Poroshenko’s letter asking for the MAP.
