MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2023) NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated on Monday that allies were not talking about sending a formal invitation to Ukraine to join the 31-nation bloc ahead of the Vilnius summit in July.
"At the Vilnius summit and in the preparations for the summit we are not discussing the issue of formal invitation. What we are discussing is how to move Ukraine closer to NATO," Stoltenberg told a news conference in Germany.
"There are ongoing consultations and I am not in a position to preempt the outcome of those consultations. What I can say is that allies actually all agree on a lot. We agree on that NATO's door is open ... We also agree on what we said in 2008 � that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance," he added.
The allies agreed at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest that Ukraine would become a NATO member in future, but they have repeatedly refused to offer it a timeline with specific dates by which it can join the alliance, despite pleas from Kiev.
