Anastasia Pechenyuk05:10, 07/11/234 min.1448

The “lead soloist” of the NATO summit in Bucharest referred to the low level of support for Ukraine’s accession to NATO among citizens.

15 years ago, at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Ukraine could have received an Action Plan for membership in the Alliance, but this path was blocked by the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel. 

In an interview with TSN, the third president of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, told how he learned that the prospects for joining the alliance were extremely illusory.

 “When the proposed draft resolution was placed on my table… Alphabetical seating at the table, on the y, the US is nearby. I show [the 43rd US President George] Bush: ‘George, for such an edition we had to go to Bucharest?” Yushchenko recalls and notes that Bush responded by pointing to Merkel, who was sitting in the opposite sector, and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The President notes that after that he went with colleagues to the German Chancellor to listen to her position, but received only a remark about the allegedly low level of support for the path to NATO in Ukraine.”Angela, you know, a year ago the thesis of integration into NATO was supported by 14 percent, now 31 percent.”

 I was convinced that on any other platform, say that your dynamics is multiple times, then [I will consider that] this is a very good internal policy,” Yushchenko adds.Эксклюзив: как у Ющенко навсегда испортились отношения с Меркель из-за НАТОExclusive: how Yushchenko’s relationship with Merkel forever deteriorated because of NATO

Angela Merkel – role in blocking Ukraine’s accession to NATO

In April 2008, a NATO summit was held in Bucharest, Romania, on the agenda of which were the recognition of Kosovo, military action in Afghanistan, expansion of the alliance by joining Croatia, Albania and Macedonia, and joining the NATO Membership Action Program Ukraine and Georgia. 

As a result, a declaration was adopted, which states that NATO welcomes the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia, and the MAP will be the next step on their path to membership. 

At the same time, no MAP was received. One of the key roles in this was played by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba noted, “fiercely resisted any progress towards Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

“In April 2022, weeks after the Russian Federation unleashed a bloody war against Ukraine, Merkel said that she still considers her decision that the country did not join the Alliance, made in 2008, to be correct.A year later, Merkel again commented on the events of the Ukrainian-Russian war  and called her policy towards the aggressor country correct.On the eve of the NATO summit in Vilnius, which will be held on July 11-12, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba urged the German government not to repeat the mistakes of the former chancellor.

(C)UNIAN 2023