Russia’s President-Elect Warns of Georgia’s NATO Membership

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president-elect, has warned that granting NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine could threaten European security.

“We are not happy about the situation around Georgia and Ukraine. We consider that it is extremely troublesome for the existing structure of European security,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Financial Times published on March 24. “No state can be pleased about having representatives of a military bloc to which it does not belong coming close to its borders.”

A NATO summit in Bucharest on April 2-4 is expected to decide whether to extend its Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Georgia and Ukraine.

President Bush told his Georgian counterpart, Mikheil Saakashvili, during a meeting in Washington on March 19 that he would press for Georgia’s MAP at the Bucharest summit.

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