Georgia, Not Russia, to Decide Georgia’s NATO Membership -Stoltenberg

Speaking at an event hosted by Brookings Institution and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the Secretary General rebuffed on October 5 the notion that Russia’s small neighbors joining NATO would be a “provocation” to Moscow as “absolutely wrong.”

He said that the message that it was provocative for Russia that Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to join the NATO “just exemplifies” that Russia wants a world order where they have a sphere of influence.

“That’s not the world I would like to live in,” noted the Secretary General. “And actually I fight for decades to move away from that world.”

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“When 30 Allies agree that they are ready to join, they will join,” he said