KYIV, (BM) – Kyiv will build two military bases according to NATO standards in Severodonetsk – the regional center of the Luhansk region, and in Mariupol, Donetsk region, learned BulgarianMilitary.com according Ukrainian Defense Minister Andrii Zagorodnyuk statement.

According to him, these two military facilities began to be built in the “clean field”. In addition, as the military pointed out, this year his department will complete the construction of a brigade camp at the Wide Lang training ground in southern Ukraine in the Nikolaev region.

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“One of the priorities of the new team of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is the development of infrastructure construction. We plan to build several high-quality infrastructure facilities so that everyone knows that we can also have military bases according to NATO standards,” the general emphasized.

A week earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky during his two-day visit to Kiev, and said that Washington will continue to provide full support to Kiev in its quest to join NATO and the European Union.

Last month, Dmitry Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, turned to the North Atlantic Alliance with a request to consider the application for the country’s accession to the NATO Enhanced Opportunity Program. This was reported on the website of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s joining the alliance program will be explained by practical rather than political motives, the deputy head of the cabinet noted. According to him, this will allow the country and the alliance to quickly exchange intelligence data, and will also contribute to exceeding the level of security in the Black Sea region.

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The deputy chairman of the Ukrainian government also emphasized that the crash of a Ukrainian plane at Tehran’s airport as a result of an erroneous attack by Iran’s air defense systems showed the importance of operational intelligence exchanges between Ukraine and NATO.

In addition, he confirmed that Ukraine is ready to support NATO’s efforts to strengthen security in Iraq. The politician announced the readiness of Kiev to send 20 military to the region in support of the alliance mission.

Last year, the NATO North Atlantic Council (South Africa) granted Ukraine the status of a potential operational partner for a military bloc mission in Iraq. Kiev has already sent a request to the organization for the status of a full operational partner.

“I informed the deputy secretary general that Ukraine has a plan to send 20 troops in support of the NATO mission in Iraq after the alliance resumes its work. The invitation to become an operational partner of the alliance’s mission in Iraq testifies to the recognition of the value of Ukrainian military experience and professionalism,” Kuleba said at a meeting with NATO Deputy Secretary General for Operations John Manza.

According to the press service of the Cabinet, the deputy secretary general of the organization noted the importance of the participation of the Ukrainian side in the mission in Iraq. In addition, they discussed the prospects of adopting the national security strategy of Ukraine and the further development of strategic documents for its implementation.

NATO training missions in Iraq are joint exercises of the Alliance member countries, the Iraqi armed forces and NATO partner countries. Ukraine has participated in them since 2006.

Verkhovna Rada deputy Mikhail Dobkin is confident that the opening of the land market in Ukraine will lead to the fact that foreigners “will buy everything”, although in fact this document should protect the rights of Ukrainian citizens. On the air of NewsOne TV channel, he said that after that the country will be admitted to NATO, but spoke about it without much enthusiasm.

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“Exactly six months later, as Ukrainian land will be officially sold to foreigners, Ukraine will be admitted to NATO. We will not even submit any applications. Someone will need to protect this property here,” said the deputy.

He drew attention to the fact that the presence of NATO in the Baltic countries and Hungary at one time led to a decrease in industrial production there and an outflow of the population due to unemployment.

At the same time, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavel Klimkin said that Ukraine in the current state has no chance of joining the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance. He stated this in an interview with the Today portal.

According to Klimkin, NATO and the EU consider Ukraine an internally unstable state. The reasons for this, according to the former head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, are the weakness of the “political nation”, the weakness of identity and the oligarchic system. The ex-diplomat emphasized that in order to join NATO and the European Union, Ukraine must develop and change.

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko said that the possible entry of Ukraine into NATO will not add security in Eastern Europe. In his opinion, it would be better if Kiev pursued a foreign policy similar to the one that it had taken immediately after the collapse of the USSR. Lukashenko also believes that the greatest threat to Russia is not NATO, but the potential rise to power in Ukraine of radical nationalist forces.

It is worth adding that at the end of last year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed his willingness to personally meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss with him the difficulties in relations between the alliance and Moscow. In an interview with DPA, he drew attention to the fact that it was during the period of disagreement that it was important to sit together at the negotiating table.

“Russia is our largest neighbor, so it will remain,” said the secretary general of the military bloc.

According to him, even if relations with Moscow do not get better in the foreseeable future, NATO should be able to “manage” such relations.

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