At the summit in Vilnius, NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană reinforces the commitment to Ukraine. The country is to “move closer to the defense alliance than ever before.”
On August 23, the new NATO-Ukraine Council met for the first time. It brought together representatives of NATO and Ukraine around one table. This included the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In addition, NATO put together a multi-year support package at the meeting. It aims to make Ukraine’s armed forces fully interoperable with NATO forces. Also, a Membership Action Plan is no longer necessary. A two-step process thus becomes one.
At the meeting in Lithuania, the Deputy Secretary General stressed the importance of continuing to provide military support to Ukraine. Only in this way, he said, could Ukraine make progress and liberate more territories. He logically welcomed the continued military assistance to the Eastern European nation. In particular, he positively highlighted the deliveries of F-16 fighter jets by Denmark and the Netherlands. “NATO’s support to Ukraine is unshaken,” Geoană stressed. NATO’s assistance does not have an expiration date.
The future security structure in Europe, whether it includes Ukraine or not, will be discussed in detail at the Berlin Security Conference. Olga Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, has already confirmed her participation. She will likely be joined by the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Wopke Bastiaan Hoekstra and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Representative of the USA to the United Nations.