The North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) should develop an action plan for Ukraine and Georgia to join the organization, while the existence of unresolved territorial disputes between both countries can be ignored. This opinion was expressed by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a publication in Politico.
“We promised Georgia and Ukraine seats at the NATO table in 2008, and it’s time to develop an action plan to fulfill our promise. If necessary, we can do this with the proviso that Article 5 of the NATO Charter applies only to the territory under the control of Kiev and Tbilisi, ”the former secretary general noted.
To implement such a plan, the countries of the alliance can limit the operation of the 5th article of the charter of the alliance, in which the parties recognized that “an armed attack on one (the contracting party. – Ed.) Or several of them in Europe or North America will be considered as an attack on them in general ”.
NATO’s position on the issue of Ukraine’s inclusion in the number of member countries remains evasive. So, on December 16, Secretary General of the bloc Jens Stoltenberg did not answer the question of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about in which year the country will join NATO.
At the same time, Kiev considers joining NATO to be the main direction of the country’s foreign policy. In 2014, the Ukrainian parliament decided to abandon the country’s non-aligned status. In 2019, the Ukrainian authorities changed the text of the constitution, now it is spelled out that the state aims to join NATO.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it views Ukraine’s entry into the alliance as an unfriendly step. On December 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that after admission to NATO, weapons threatening Russia could be deployed in Ukraine. The Russian leader also called the question of whether the Russian Federation is going to attack Ukraine, noting that Russia is a peace-loving state, provocative.
The problem of the internal Ukrainian conflict and the issue of NATO’s eastward expansion will be included in the agenda of the Russian-American talks on strategic stability and security issues, which will be held on January 10.
Thereafter, on January 12, the issue of European security and the situation in Ukraine will be discussed at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council and on January 13 with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Source: IZ
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
