BRUSSELS — Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has been invited to the July 11-12 NATO Summit in Brussels. And even if Hungary, at odds with Ukraine over the status of the Hungarian language in Ukraine, continues to block meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, there will be talks.
Hungary is obstructing Ukraine’s Western integration in a dispute over a language law that mandates that the Ukrainian language is taught in public schools. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban considers the measure discriminatory against the more than 100,000 ethnic Hungarians living mainly in southwestern Ukraine.
So NATO allies will have to talk with Poroshenko outside the format of the commission.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said allies “haven’t yet decided the exact formats and the exact types of meeting, but he (Poroshenko) will be invited.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak participated in the meeting of NATO defense ministers and countries contributing to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, including Hungarian representatives. While he discussed his concerns over Hungary’s obstruction of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, he said they talked mostly about military cooperation.
Poltorak reaffirmed Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. “This a strategic task, and we will do everything necessary to become a member. We want it.”
But Ukraine is sailing into rougher Western waters. Not only do European politicians, such as Italy’s prime minister, want sanctions removed against Russia despite its illegal annexation of the Crimea and war in the eastern Donbas, but U.S. President Donald J. Trump said he wants to see Russia rejoin the Group of Seven nations that expelled the Kremlin over its aggression.
Stoltenberg believes NATO will stay united.
“What we have seen is that there are disagreements related to, for instance, trade, environment, the Iran nuclear deal, but that has not weakened NATO’s ability to unite around our core task, to defend and protect each other. Actually, we have seen the opposite. We have seen that NATO has been able to build up and to strengthen our deterrence and our defence and our unity,” said Stoltenberg.
The secretary general underlined that the “best thing would be if we were able to solve those differences. But as long as these differences remain unsolved, then my main responsibility is to make sure that NATO is strong and united, despite those differences. And that’s exactly what we have managed to do.
Defense ministers at their meeting agreed to bolster the readiness of existing forces in NATO. Allies also committed, by 2020, to have 30 mechanized battalions, 30 air squadrons and 30 combat vessels, ready to use within 30 days or less. Ministers also agreed that the new joint force command for the Atlantic will be based at Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States and new enabling command will be based in Ulm, Germany.
