NATO does not plan to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance in near future, - US Permanent Representative Smith
The North Atlantic Alliance does not plan to invite Ukraine to join the NATO bloc in the near future.
This was announced on the eve of a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels by US Permanent Representative to NATO Julian Smith, Voice of America reports, Censor.NET reports.
Answering journalists' questions about the possibility of extending an official invitation to Ukraine to join NATO, the ambassador said that the position of partners, and the United States in particular, remains unchanged.
"I think NATO's position on this is very clear. We stated this summer at the 75th anniversary summit that Ukraine is on an irreversible path to membership, and that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance. We are not at a point where the Alliance is talking about extending an invitation in the short term," Smith said.
At the same time, the US Permanent Representative to NATO noted that the Alliance and Kyiv "continue to talk about ways in which Ukraine can continue to move towards NATO".
As a reminder, on Wednesday, 16 October, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented the Victory Plan at a meeting in the Verkhovna Rada. The first point of Ukraine's Victory Plan in the war against Russia is to invite Ukraine to join NATO.
