NATO/Ukraine/Georgien

Allies dis­cuss rela­tions with Ukraine and Geor­gia and send a sig­nal to Rus­sia

As tasked by the Heads of State and Gov­ern­ment in Bucharest, Allied Min­is­ters dis­cussed progress made by Ukraine and Geor­gia towards meet­ing mem­ber­ship require­ments and dis­cussed best ways to assist with their reforms.

First, Allies reaf­firmed “all ele­ments of the deci­sions regard­ing Ukraine and Geor­gia” made in Bucharest. Sec­ond, Min­is­ters con­clud­ed that both coun­tries have made strides for­ward but both “have sig­nif­i­cant work left to do”. 

Allies decid­ed there­fore to enhance oppor­tu­ni­ties for assist­ing them in these efforts, mak­ing use of the frame­work of the exist­ing NATO-Ukraine Com­mis­sion and NATO-Geor­gia Com­mis­sion – with­out prej­u­dice to fur­ther deci­sions which must be tak­en about MAP. More­over, Min­is­ters agreed that NATO infor­ma­tion and liai­son offices in these coun­tries will be rein­forced. Annu­al Nation­al Pro­grammes will also be devel­oped allow­ing for annu­al reviews by the Allies. 

Dur­ing sep­a­rate ses­sions of the NATO-Ukraine Com­mis­sion (NUC) with Min­is­ter Volodymyr Ogryzko and the NATO-Geor­gia Com­mis­sion (NGC) with Min­is­ter Eka Tkeshe­lashvili (the first NGC meet­ing at the lev­el of for­eign min­is­ters), in-depth dis­cus­sions took place of the lat­est devel­op­ments in the two respec­tive coun­tries. There was also an exchange of views on prospects for future polit­i­cal con­sul­ta­tions, coop­er­a­tion and engagement. 

As far as rela­tion­ship with Rus­sia is con­cerned NATO min­is­ters stressed the impor­tance of these rela­tions and reit­er­at­ed their neg­a­tive assess­ment of some recent actions and state­ments made by the Russ­ian author­i­ties. In par­tic­u­lar Allies called upon Rus­sia to respect inter­na­tion­al val­ues and prin­ci­ples on which inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty sys­tem is based, to imple­ment ful­ly the com­mit­ments agreed with Geor­gia and to refrain from con­fronta­tion­al state­ments and threats to the secu­ri­ty of Allies and partners. 

Empha­sis­ing that no busi­ness as usu­al has been con­duct­ed in the NATO-Rus­sia Coun­cil (NRC) since August – thus lead­ing to a lim­it­ed scope of cur­rent prac­ti­cal coop­er­a­tion — Allies agreed to a mea­sured and phased approach in the near future. The ele­ments of this approach con­sist of man­dat­ing the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al to re-engage with Rus­sia at the polit­i­cal lev­el and express­ing will­ing­ness to under­take infor­mal dis­cus­sions in the NRC. 

Source:
NATO