‘Open door to NATO’ for Georgia, Ukraine as Pentagon chief Austin visits Eastern Europe
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will stress this week that there is an “open door to NATO” for Ukraine and Georgia, the two nations on the front lines of Russian aggression said, Pentagon officials said over the weekend.
Austin will visit these two countries and Romania in the coming days before traveling to Brussels for a meeting with NATO defense ministers. Pentagon officials put the trip as a clear signal to Moscow that the United States and its NATO ally stand firm behind Ukrainian and Georgian sovereignty in the face of Russian provocations and military expansion over the past decade.
“We reassure and strengthen the sovereignty of countries that are at the forefront of Russian aggression,” said a senior defense official.
Russian forces occupy pieces of Georgia and Ukraine. Moscow’s most high-profile and controversial move in the region came in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. The United States and many of its allies do not recognize this annexation and still consider Crimea to be part of Ukraine.
Against this background, defense officials said Austin will tell Ukrainian and Georgian leaders that there is an open door to NATO membership and that each country should take steps to qualify for membership.
Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is a member of the 30-nation alliance. Full integration of both nations into NATO would provoke fierce opposition from Russia, which has long opposed NATO expansion towards its borders.
Although neither of the two countries will formally join NATO in the near future, alliance leaders say more needs to be done to help them resist Russian aggression.
“We should provide more support, more training, more capacity building, help them implement reforms, fight corruption, build their security and defense institutions,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a speech in Washington earlier this month.
“We must state that there is much between nothing and full membership.”
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