Ukraine launches discussion with NATO on membership

Ukraine and NATO are beginning to discuss the introduction of an action plan on Ukraine's membership of the alliance.

Such an agreement reached at a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Commission was announced by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at a joint briefing with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Kyiv on Monday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The purpose of our international security policy: we consider it necessary, and today it was clearly emphasized that we should begin the discussion about the introduction of the plan. And our proposals for the beginning of the discussion were welcomed," Poroshenko said.

He said that Ukraine was determined to conduct reforms and added that "we have a clear schedule of what we have to do before 2020 so as to meet membership criteria."

According to him, now "we do not meet these criteria, because in 20 years nothing was done, and they passed the laws that pushed us away from NATO."

He said that Ukraine had made huge reforms in the last three years "and we are convinced that the discussion will bring us closer to the possibility of submitting a respective membership bid."

As reported, on June 8, 2017, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, adopted a law defining Ukraine's membership of NATO as a strategic foreign policy priority of the state.

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