Servicemen of the National Guard of Ukraine during training according to NATO methodology. Archive photoMOSCOW, 14 Jan. The Kiev military expert and retired SBU colonel Oleg Starikov, on the air of the Nash TV channel, listed the conditions that Ukraine needs to fulfill in order to join the North Atlantic Alliance. «There are three categories when a country is considered (for joining NATO — Approx. ed.). Firstly, you need to be in the European theater of operations. Ukraine is located. Secondly, to conduct a political dialogue with NATO countries, including Hungary, which requires Ukraine to resolve the language issue. Thirdly, is our country doing something to ensure that we meet the standards or not? Does nothing,» he stated. In 2014, Kiev abandoned its non-bloc status, and in 2019 the Verkhovna Rada adopted amendments to the Constitution, fixing the course towards joining the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance. Former Secretary General of the military association Anders Fogh Rasmussen noted that in order to become a member of the organization, Ukraine needs to achieve certain criteria, the implementation of which will take a long time. At the end of 2021, Russia published draft agreements with the United States and agreements with NATO on security guarantees. Moscow, in particular, demands from its Western partners legal guarantees of refusing further expansion of NATO to the east, from joining the alliance of Ukraine and from creating military bases in the countries of the former USSR.
Ukraine was warned about the loss of territories in case of joining NATO
