Russia Hails NATO Decision on Georgia, Ukraine

In an annual question-and-answer session with the Russian citizens, Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, welcomed NATO’s decision not to grant Georgia and Ukraine Membership Action Plan and said that it was “a positive signal” coming from the President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration.

“Ukraine and Georgia were rejected in granting the Membership Action Plan. We hear at an expert level from those people, who have close ties with the President-elect [Barack Obama], his inner circle, that it is not necessary to accelerate this process [of NATO expansion], it is not necessary to spoil relations with Russia,” Putin said.

Also on December 4, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that NATO’s refusal to grant MAP to Georgia and Ukraine demonstrated that the alliance “has understood those risks, which are related to fast-track dragging” of these countries into NATO.

It also said that the alliance has returned to “the positions of realism” after having decided to resume contacts with Russia in frames of the NATO-Russia Council. These relations were suspended after the August war in Georgia.

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