NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed NATO member states' readiness to accept Ukraine into their community under a number of conditions, and Russia has no voting right in this matter. He said this during a speech at the Odesa Naval Academy, the Alliance's press service reports.

"My view on Ukraine's membership is the same as NATO’s. We made the decision in Bucharest at the NATO summit in 2008. And there we decided that Ukraine would become a NATO member. And that decision remains valid. We repeated that decision many times. At the same time, the focus is now on reform, in particular, on how we can help you, support you in conforming to NATO standards, strengthen your defense and security institutions, improve what we call interoperability," Stoltenberg said.

According to him, joint training of Ukrainian military and Alliance soldiers, NATO’s support of the Odesa Naval Academy and reforms bring Ukraine closer to membership in the North Atlantic bloc.

"This decision must be made by Ukraine and the 29 existing members of the Alliance. No one else has the right to interfere with such a decision. Russia has no right to vote. It does not have any legal or real platform to influence such a decision," the Secretary General stated.

As we reported earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will have a speech in Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine as part of the North Atlantic Council's visit to Ukraine, which will take place on October 30-31. Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Dmytro Kuleba told this during an interview with Segodnya.