The Atlantic Alliance summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, ends this Wednesday with the participation of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and the first meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council.
The work resumes at 09:00 local time (two hours more than in mainland Portugal), with a meeting between the 31 NATO member states, and the participation, as guests, of Sweden, of the Indo-Pacific partners and the European Union.
With Sweden’s accession process moving to the last stage after the deadlock imposed by Turkey was broken, on the eve of the start of the summit, and clarifying on the first day about Ukraine’s eventual membership, the last day of the summit it will address “hybrid threats” and, in particular, “Chinese assertiveness” that “affects the security” of allies and partners.
Therefore, countries such as Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia were invited to participate in today’s meetings.
According to the official program, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will hold a joint press conference, which will precede the first meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council.
This council puts Ukraine on an equal footing with the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, even though it is not a member of it.
At the end of the day, the NATO Secretary General will give another press conference. Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa is also expected to speak to the press.
On the first day of the summit, the NATO Secretary General announced that the invitation to Ukraine to join NATO will be made “when there is agreement” of all member states and “conditions are met”, and that there was never a timetable. .
Summit host country Lithuania joined NATO in 2004, along with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, and borders Belarus, Latvia and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
Source: TSF
