News

Alyona Getmanchuk, Director of the Institute of World Policy, spoke at the international conference “NATO and Ukraine: Prospects and Opportunities” hosted by the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Kyiv. The event officially launched activities of the Lithuanian Embassy as a NATO Contact Point Embassy.Linas Linkevičius, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Marius Velicka, Deputy Minister of Defense of Lithuania, and Leonid Holopatyuk, First Deputy Minister of Defence of Ukraine were among the speakers.
{2}
Linas Linkevičius, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, Oleg Kokoshynski, Vice President of the Atlantic Council in Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and Volodymyr Ohryzko, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine (2007-2009)
{1}
Alyona Getmanchuk, Director of the Institute of World Policy, Leonid Holopatyuk, First Deputy Minister of Defence of Ukraine, Natalia Nemyliwska, Director of the NATO Information and Documentation Centre in Ukraine, and Marius Velicka, Deputy Minister of Defense of Lithuania
Alyona Getmnchuk stressed the existing uncertainty about the format of Ukraine-NATO relations: “Its still unclear if refusal from the non-bloc status leads to the integration into NATO or to neutrality, which is even worth than non-bloc status”.

«Only Russian aggression and external enemy presence forced Ukraine to care about its security. But its still hard to answer whether political will to reform army and security sector in general according to so-called NATO standards will be present when the war ends. Probably, there will be a need for some strong motivation, like return to the Euro-Atlantic integration track and receiving clear membership perspective.

While the benefits of Ukraine’s membership in NATO are quite clear even for ordinary Ukrainians, the benefits of Ukraine’s partnership are still vague and questionable. «Membership or nothing» approach is quite popular both in expert community and civil society. What is the added value of partnership without membership? That is the question I’m frequently asked not only in Kyiv, but around Ukraine,” – said Alyona Getmanchuk.

Director of IWP also presented the infographic on the benefits of Ukraine-NATO cooperation and told the ambitious IWP’s project “Strategic Discussion Club”, aimed to address major threats to Ukraine’s security and increase public control over the security sector. In 2012-2013, IWP organized six meetings of the Strategic Discussion Club in Kyiv. In 2014, the SDC meetings have been held in Kharkiv, Odessa, and Zaporizhzhya.
{3}
The event was attended by over 100 participants including members of the Verkhovna Rada, ambassadors of NATO member countries and partner states, representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, heads of the Ukrainian NGOs.