Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration: Ukraine only needs NATO membership

The Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Olga Stefanishyna told this in an interview with Evropeyskaya Pravda.

If Ukraine were offered the MAP (Membership Action Plan - ed.) before February 24, we would be most satisfied with this decision, happy and would consider that we have fulfilled the requirements of our Constitution, and this is the only right decision. Today, the proposal for a MAP within NATO will be tantamount to the decision of the Bucharest summit in 2008, Stefanishina explained.

It should be reminded that the summit in Bucharest of the NATO member countries took place on April 2-4, 2008, in the press it was dubbed a meeting of "great hopes" and "great scandals". The issues on the agenda were the recognition of Kosovo, military operations in Afghanistan, the expansion of the Alliance, the accession of Croatia, Albania and Macedonia, as well as the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to the MAP. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, at this summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his opinion to George W. Bush that “Ukraine is not even a state!” and hinted that if Ukraine joins NATO, Russia could start tearing away Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

Olga Stefanishina also noted that she sees no point in seriously discussing Russia's objections to Ukraine's accession to NATO, given that the prospect of negotiations with the Kremlin is still far off.

If you have noticed that almost half the time that a full-scale war is going on, Russia does not make such demands and does not conduct such discussions at all. That is, in this regard, a full-scale war leveled all possible narratives of the Russian Federation - both about the threat from NATO, and about the protection of the Russian-speaking population, and many things that, in fact, the countries of the Alliance were afraid of, saying that there was no need to irritate Russia. Therefore, we are not too serious about any statements by the Russian Federation and we will be ready to return to the discussion after the liberation of our territories, the Deputy Prime Minister said.

Stefanyshina said that the analysis of the compliance of the Ukrainian security and defense sector and other structures with NATO standards showed that Ukraine has already de facto implemented a lot of the Alliance's practices.