The NATO-Ukraine charter: Kiev's Euro-Atlantic integration

As a country renouncing nuclear weapons, Ukraine initially sought a neutral status and, like Russia, set about viewing NATO as its adversary. Its attitude towards the alliance has changed considerably over the years. The determinant political forces in Kiev(Kyiv) increasingly turned to NATO in an effort to establish ties which were as close as possible. The result of these efforts is a NATO-Ukraine Charter, which, in contrast to the NATO-Russia Founding Act, is not orientated to safeguards against the alliance, but to a process of convergence. In the following article, Olga Alexanderova of the Federal Institute for East European and International Studies in Cologne analyses the document from a primarily Ukrainian perspective.