To join NATO, Ukraine first needs to resolve the conflict on its territory.
Secretary General of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly David Hobbes stated this on the air of the Lvov NTA TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“It is very difficult to say how a country can join the Alliance if there are border disputes. One of the conditions should be the resolution of border conflicts. But there are precedents for how this was not necessarily a barrier to joining the Alliance. I think that in any case we are talking about a long-term process.
Even if you don’t end up joining NATO and the EU, it will still be a good result for Ukraine, because it’s about fighting corruption, good governance - all this will take time...
We're probably talking somewhere around 15 years, maybe 50. The point is that you have to continually make progress to reach those standards... Realistically, achieving NATO membership is a long-term vision, but it's a journey that's worth it “to go through it, because it provides for the implementation of reforms along this entire path,” said Hobbes.