Representative of Ukraine’s Mission in NATO: Ukraine can be Invited to special NATO partners program in 2018
Next year, Ukraine can be invited to the Enhance Opportunity Program, which is a program for special partners of NATO, stated Head of the Mission of Ukraine to NATO Vadym Prystaiko in an interview with Ukrinform.
“For Ukraine, the priority is to hold a special meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Commission at the highest level, to which the President will be invited [in connection with the NATO summit on July 11-12, 2018 in Brussels]. Also, as planned, at that time we will receive support for our application for joining the Enhance Opportunity Program,” Prystaiko said.
“That is, Ukraine should be invited to this program. We are working on it,” he added.
According to Prystaiko, participation in this program is not an intermediate step for Ukraine to get into the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP).
“Various blocks of countries are involved in this program. Some remain within the framework of this enhanced partnership and are not going to be brought into the MAP. But there are countries like Georgia which seek to become part of the MAP, or bypass this step and immediately become a member of NATO,” the diplomat said.