According to Walker, the alliance really wants to get Ukraine and Georgia, but is not ready for them to go to a military conflict with Moscow.
Kurt Walker, an American diplomat and former “staring” over Ukraine, speaking during an online discussion at the Kiev Security Forum, said that he considers it necessary to exclude from the agreement with potential members of the Alliance the possibility of applying paragraph 5 of the NATO Charter, which states that the attack on any country, NATO will be seen as an attack on the entire alliance as a whole.
“Members of the Alliance do not have a special desire to accept countries that have territories occupied by Russia into their ranks, since according to the fifth article (Article 5 of the NATO Charter, an attack on any NATO country will be considered an attack on the entire alliance), this will automatically “it would mean the need to fight with Russia and conquer these territories by force,” Volker said. “In a word, the respective country and NATO sign an agreement that the fifth article will not directly concern the occupied territories.”
According to the American diplomat, such an exception should deprive Russia of incentives “to continue the occupation of these territories.”
“We pledge ourselves first not to use force to return them, and we will only support the peaceful reintegration of these territories and the restoration of the integrity of countries seeking to join NATO,” Walker said.