Nato readjusts membership qualifications for Ukraine
February 24 2022.
A growing number of Nato member states have backed a British proposal to allow Kyiv to skip the MAP programme that sets out political, economic and military targets candidates have to meet and that other Eastern European nations had to pass before joining the alliance.
With such a move, the alliance could address demands to go beyond a declaration made at a Nato summit in 2008 which said Ukraine would become a member eventually, without offering Kyiv an actual invitation or timetable.
“It is also the best moment to offer clarity on the invitation to Ukraine to become member,” Kuleba said on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Russia’s top general, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, was shown ordering subordinates to destroy Ukrainian missile sites in a video released yesterday, his first appearance in public since a failed June 24 mercenary mutiny.
Putin has for now kept his two most powerful military men, defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Gerasimov, in their posts despite demands from mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin to sack them over alleged incompetence in running military operations in Ukraine.
Putin’s spokesperson said yesterday that the Russian leader had held Kremlin talks with Prigozhin and his commanders on June 29 to discuss the mutiny and their performance at the front along with their future employment options. He made no mention of Shoigu or Gerasimov.
Chairing a meeting with top generals, Gerasimov, 67, asked for and then listened to a report by Viktor Afzalov, deputy in the aerospace forces to General Sergei Surovikin. Surovikin has not been seen in public since the mutiny.
Since a deal was brokered to defuse the mutiny, Putin and the Kremlin have projected a business-as-usual image. The survival of Shoigu and Gerasimov means that Prigozhin’s attempt to topple Putin’s top military brass has failed, at least for now.