NATO will be ready to speak about Ukraine's accession to the Alliance after a seven-year transition period, and Kyiv is going to make it within 5-6 years, acting chief of Ukraine's Mission to NATO Yehor Bozhok said.
“At least this is the timeframe stipulated in the standards of the transition period due to be determined by NATO. When we spoke about the fulfillment of the entire range of the criteria, we talked that Ukraine would have to meet them within five to six years. All the new NATO member states have had precisely a period of that length,” Bozhok said during an online conference when answering a question from online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda whether it is realistic to conduct the reform for seven years.
According to the diplomat, Ukraine’s integration process has two directions. The first one is European integration, which includes the entire list of the criteria outlined in the Association Agreement with the EU (economic reforms, the reformation of the social sector, law-enforcement).
The second one includes defense and security criteria, the level of the development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in order to be compatible with NATO member states’ armies.
“In order to understand what we’re talking about one should only look at how a NATO solder is equipped and compare this to what a Ukrainian solder has got. And secondly, one should look at the military hardware used by NATO member states and by Ukraine’s armed forces. And when a citizen sees a modernized army in Ukraine and everyone strives to service there, when these are real knowledge and skills, a fair allowance, and when it is prestigious, then we’ll see that Ukraine meets that set of criteria,” he said.
