Ukraine Is an Important Partner of NATO
Szöveg: honvedelem.hu / MTI | 2013. február 25. 14:00“Ukraine is an important partner of NATO, so it is to be welcomed that a NATO–Ukraine defence ministerial meeting has now been held again, for the first time since the summer of 2010”, Hungarian Minister of Defence Csaba Hende stressed in his statement made to Hungarian News Agency MTI in Brussels on Friday, February 22.
which started on Thursday. On the second day of the meeting, the NATO defence ministers
held a discussion with their Ukrainian counterpart, Pavlo Lebedev.
Minister Hende told MTI that on Friday they had signed an agreement confirming Ukraine’s
intent to contribute a warship to NATO’s maritime Operation Ocean Shield, which fights
piracy off the coast of Somalia. He also noted that additionally, Ukraine is present in the
NATO-led military missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo as well. Csaba Hende reaffirmed
that the NATO countries support the efforts to implement the reform of the armed forces in
Ukraine.
On the previous day the NATO ministers discussed defence capabilities. They all agreed that
in order to sustain the good capabilities of interoperability and cooperation which have been
generated and practiced in Afghanistan, they should hold more extensive military exercises in
greater numbers than before.
The Minister of Defence told MTI that so far they had not formulated any concrete military
plans for these exercises, for the time being they had announced their intention on the political
level. He added that the United States of America had also indicated its readiness to receive
NATO exercises in its own area. As Minister Hende remarked, the implementation of such
an exercise would offer the Europeans a good opportunity to practice the movement of troops
over long distances in a given time.
The ministers also agreed that air, maritime and cyber defence exercises should also be held
in addition to land exercises, Minister Hende added.
Speaking about Afghanistan, the Minister said that no decision had so far been made
concerning the troop level and structure of the new international mission which is to focus
on training after 2014 – the withdrawal of ISAF forces. Therefore, the extent of Hungarian
participation in this new mission is not yet known either. At the same time, Hungary will
contribute to the costs of maintaining the Afghan armed forces because today Afghanistan
would not be able to cover those costs on its own. Due to the difficult state of the Hungarian
economy, Hungary’s commitment – which is an annual 500 million USD (110 million HUF)
between 2015 and 2017 – is lower than the contributions of other NATO countries with
similar size, Minister Hende said.
Photo: nato.int
