BRUSSELS – Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klymkin will on Dec. 1 attend the NATO-Ukraine Commission, the decision-making body responsible for bilateral relations, according to Gerlinde Niehus, head of NATO’s public diplomacy division.
Ahead of the alliance’s Dec. 1-2 foreign ministers’ conference, NATO representatives sat down in Brussels to discuss new realities and top priorities.
Russia, through its illegal annexation of Crimea and war in Ukraine’s Donbas, as well as its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has figured prominently in “NATO’s threat environment,” said Adam Thomson, the United Kingdom’s envoy to NATO.
“I would say the most dangerous change since the start of 2014 is much greater uncertainty…the ambiguous attacks on Ukraine’s sovereignty in eastern Ukraine and before that in Crimea, the way in which the Russian state lies about its activity, which undermines trust in the ability of the two sides to negotiate and stabilize security in Europe,” Thomson said at a roundtable discussion.
When asked whether NATO was prepared to meet the threats posed by jihadist group Islamic State and Russia, Thomson said: “We have to just do it, we have to blend the dual existential threats.”
He added that Russia has “complicated the security situation” in Syria by supporting a regime led by Assad that has “clearly committed crimes against humanity.”
Looking at the Russian journalists taking part in the discussion, Thomson said he found it disappointing that “Russian propaganda” reports that Russia’s actions are “directed at ISIL (Islamic State), which is not true, only a small portion of air strikes are directed at ISIL, a majority are designed to help Assad to win back ground.”
He noted that NATO needs to “continuously adapt to meet the evolving and ever-changing threats” to security, “challenges we have never faced.”
They include, according to Thomson, militarily modernizing deterrence, politically with NATO’s foreign ministers, and institutionally to “make them adaptable by design.”
Russia high on agenda
Discussions during the Dec. 1-2 NATO foreign ministers’ meeting will be held on how to strike the right balance between keeping “NATO strong while still engaging Russia on a practical and political level,” a senior NATO diplomat said, asking to remain anonymous because the event hasn’t started yet.
NATO foreign ministers suspended all practical civilian and military cooperation with Russia in April 2014. The 28-member defense alliance has maintained political contacts at the ambassador level and higher, however, and Russia is still allowed to observe NATO military exercises.
Montenegro to become 29th NATO member country
The former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro will officially receive an invitation to join NATO at the start of the NATO foreign ministers’ conference on Dec. 1, according to a senior NATO diplomat who asked to remain anonymous because the information wasn’t made official yet.
The last phase of the accession process historically takes place over the course of two years, with Albania and Croatia, who joined in 2009, having taken that long to accede.
“Montenegro has made too many reforms that cannot be ignored and deserves” the green light to join NATO, the senior NATO diplomat said.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected]
