You're reading: NSDC says Ukraine-NATO Annual National Program to prepare country for membership in Alliance

The Annual National Program of Ukraine-NATO cooperation will help prepare Ukraine for the membership in the Alliance, Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Lytvynenko has said.

“When people talk about joining NATO, very often they mean only the armed forces. But it is important to understand that it is the state, which joins the Alliance,” Lytvynenko said during a joint meeting of the Verkhovna Rada committees on foreign affairs and the European integration with the participation of the permanent parliamentary delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

The Annual National Program is comprised of five sections: military, political, economic, information and security sections, the press service of the National Security Council reported on Friday.

Lytvynenko stressed that the implementation of NATO standards “is a road map for the development of our structures, because NATO standards are the best standards in the military field, and we take them up for the implementation of internal reforms.”

In this context, the NSDC deputy secretary noted that the achievement of interoperability, making possible the conduct of joint operations of the armed forces of Ukrainian and the allies is the task of the National Security Strategy.

Lytvynenko added that the state program of development of the Armed Forces and the state program of development of weaponry are being worked out on the basis of the military security strategy.

The joint meeting of the parliamentary committees on foreign affairs and European integration was attended by Ukrainian MPs, representatives of the Defense Ministry, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the SBU, the NATO Liaison Office in Ukraine, and the foreign embassies in Ukraine.