Ukraine presented and agreed with its allies a program to meet NATOʼs requirements for further membership in the Alliance.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg informed about this at a press conference at the Alliance headquarters.
"I am impressed by the reforms implemented by Ukraine," he noted.
At the first-ever meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council, Kyiv presented an adapted Annual National Program on further reform in accordance with the requirements of the Alliance. "We have agreed on the work program and structure to be sure of carrying out the reforms," noted the Secretary General.
The approval of the program is also mentioned in the official statement of the Ukraine-NATO Council: "NATO and Ukraine are already working and making decisions together, including interoperability, energy security, innovation, cyber defense and stability."
Ukraineʼs entry into NATO
On September 30, 2022 — after Putin announced the annexation of the occupied territory of Ukraine — the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky informed that Ukraine would apply to join NATO under an accelerated procedure.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on November 30 that Ukraineʼs victory should be a precondition for the start of negotiations on Ukraineʼs membership in NATO, and the Alliance members are helping her in this.
In the final document of the NATO summit held in Vilnius on July 11-12, 2023, it is said that Ukraine no longer needs a membership action plan to join the bloc, but it does not yet contain an invitation to the Alliance.
- On November 29, Brussels hosted the first-ever meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council at the level of foreign ministers of the Alliance countries. Ukraine was represented by Dmytro Kuleba. The key topics at this meeting were: increasing the production of weapons and ammunition, the situation on the front of the Russian-Ukrainian war, discussing the steps needed for Ukraine to join NATO. The creation of the Ukraine-NATO Council was one of the three elements of the package to bring Ukraine even closer to NATO and to membership in the Alliance.