Kiev insists on unequivocal commitment at NATO summit on Ukraine's integration into North Atlantic alliance
A few days ahead of next week's NATO summit in Vilnius, Ukraine continues to insist on an unequivocal commitment from alliance leaders that the country will be welcomed into the organisation, reports Agerpres.
"At the Vilnius summit, we expect a clear and unequivocal invitation and path to join NATO," Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, told dpa news agency.
Makeiev warned that the mistakes made at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest must not be repeated. At that summit, Germany in particular, under the leadership of then Chancellor Angela Merkel, was opposed to a rapid admission of Ukraine into the alliance.
"If Ukraine had already been a NATO member in 2014, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and now Russia's full-scale war of aggression would certainly not have happened," said the Ukrainian ambassador.
A poll by the YouGov institute shows that 42% of Germans favour Ukraine's entry into NATO after the end of the war, while 13% favour immediate membership.
On 11 and 12 July, the leaders of NATO's 31 member countries are meeting in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, with one of the topics to be discussed being Ukraine's prospects of joining the alliance.
