On 29 August 2014, at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels an extraordinary meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) was held upon the request of Ukraine according to Article 15 of the NATO-Ukraine Charter on a Distinctive Partnership of 1997. The meeting took place in view of serious military escalation by Russia against Ukraine, the aggression by Russian regular forces against Ukraine, seizure of a Ukrainian town of Novoazovsk and several border villages in Donetsk region. NUC meeting was preceded by a special meeting of the North Atlantic Council.

For Reference: Article 15 of the NATO-Ukraine Charter envisages that NATO and Ukraine will develop a crisis consultative mechanism to consult together whenever Ukraine perceives a direct threat to its territorial integrity, political independence, or security.

At the meeting, the Allies unanimously recognized the aforementioned illegal actions of Russian Federation as an act of military aggression against Ukraine, expressed strong protest to such actions, stressed that such actions of Kremlin will not remain unanswered, first of all through tightening of sanctions by the US, the EU, Canada and other international partners. NATO’s special indignation was caused by the fact that Russian military aggression took place after the meeting of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Minsk where the Ukrainian side again declared on the peaceful solution of the conflict.

NATO strongly called for Russia to withdraw its armed forces from the Ukrainian territory and to remove them from Ukrainian border to their permanent locations, to stop its support of terrorists acting in Eastern Ukraine, to come back to the frames of international law, to conduct concrete and verifiable steps towards political solution of the conflict.

Allies also stressed on serious increase of political and practical support to Ukraine given current difficult conditions of resistance to treacherous military aggression of Russian Federation. Concrete decisions on this matter will be announced at the NATO Summit in Wales, together with new approaches to relations with Russia and towards maintaining of security the Allies and the whole Euro Atlantic area in new security environment.

Based on the results of North Atlantic Council and NUC meetings, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made a statement on behalf of the Alliance.