Ukraine more concerned about NATO status than actual reforms, NATO official says

Ukrainian politicians are more concerned about gaining
a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) than performing the reforms to achieve it,
Deputy General Secretary Rose Gottemoeller told the eurointegration.com.ua news
site in an interview published on Apr. 18. “I don’t see any need at all to be
concerned about gaining a MAP,” she said. “The annual national programs are
leading you along this path.” She said it was strange to see politicians
concentrated on the “packaging,” or form, of NATO cooperation during her visits
to Ukraine. “Everyone was asking – will we have a MAP? Will there be a program
of enhanced possibilities?,” Gottemoeller said. “At the same time, no one says
something along the lines of, ‘We are supposed to make conducting reforms our
priority.’ And that’s what’s most important to me! It’s these very reforms, if
they occur, that will be the most important argument for NATO member-states
when they make a decision on Ukraine’s membership.”

The Ukrainian government is counting on NATO
member-states to confirm Ukraine’s aspirant status at their July summit in
Brussels, said on Apr. 18 Vadym Prystaiko, the head of Ukraine’s mission to
NATO. “That will be recognition that we are on the right path and want to
become alliance members,” he said. On March 10, NATO incorporated Ukraine in
the list of aspirant countries on its website, in addition to Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Georgia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Zenon Zawada:
Gottemoeller’s comments indicate that NATO membership is being used as a
political football for Ukraine’s pro-Western politicians, who want to use it
for election campaigning but aren’t interested in concrete steps. Similar observations
were made by Western officials in 2008, when Ukraine had come close to being
considered for a NATO MAP but shot itself in the foot, with pro-Western
politicians reported to have failed to approve the necessary reforms.

In particular, Poroshenko has been playing the NATO
card in recent months as he hopes to gain re-election as president. It’s a
dangerous game considering such statements can be used by Russian President
Putin as a pretext to expand military aggression in Ukraine, even if Poroshenko
doesn’t have any real intentions of pursuing reforms for NATO membership at a
realistic pace (for which more evidence is surfacing).

Poroshenko’s pro-NATO statements are reminiscent of those
issued by former President Yushchenko, as well as his recent appeal to the
ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church for official recognition of
Ukraine’s autocephalous church. Yet recent polls indicate that such
pseudo-nationalist positions don’t impress Ukrainians, who are more interested
in tangible measures to improve their daily living standards and are
increasingly supporting populist Yulia Tymoshenko.