OREANDA-NEWS. Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said in an interview on 1 + 1 TV channel that Ukraine would join the alliance in future.

“All allies agreed that Ukraine would become a NATO member. Montenegro joined NATO only two years ago, Northern Macedonia will become a NATO member in a few months, and we saw this before – after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poland, the Baltic countries – no one even in their dreams could have imagined that he could be in NATO,” Stoltenberg said.

The Secretary General also promised that the organization would help Kiev to intensify reforms and modernize society so that the country could become a member of the military bloc.

Being asked by a reporter whether NATO will leave Ukraine a “gray zone” between Russia and European countries, Stoltenberg noted that Ukraine is one of the alliance’s 40 partners. “For some countries, partnership is the first step towards membership. But for all countries, partnership is a relationship with NATO. It should be understood that there is a great distance between “no relations” and “full membership,” Stoltenberg explained.

The politician added that it is necessary for Ukrainian authorities to think what the organization can do together with them to help Kiev to become a full member of the alliance.

At the end of October, at a speech in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian single-chamber parliament), Stoltenberg said that the way to the alliance is not easy and that those states which want to go through it need significant reforms. During that speech Stoltenberg also mentioned that the doors to NATO remain open for Kiev.