Lithuania: NATO members waive MAP for Ukraine: Pres. Nauseda

NATO member states have decided to drop the requirement for a Membership Action Plan (MAP) for Ukraine on its path to NATO membership, Lithuania’s President, Gitanas Nauseda, confirmed, Ukrainska Pravda reports. This was earlier announced by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba. Nauseda noted that the move would simplify Ukraine’s NATO accession process. He stressed that the NATO summit in Vilnius needed to send Ukraine a “very concrete signal” that it could join NATO when circumstances allowed, and that NATO needed to go beyond the parameters set at the Bucharest summit in 2008. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that consultations on the summit’s final decisions were still ongoing.