Lviv region signs a cooperation memorandum with NATO

Lviv Oblast State Administration (LOSA) and the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine signed the memorandum in late September, the ceremony being part of Lviv Franko University’s department of international relations’ fall workshop “NATO in a Changing Global Security Environment.” Head of the LOSA Viktor Shemchuk and Director of the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine Natalia Nemylivska affixed their signatures to the document.

“We have identified several areas of common interest,” the LOSA’s acting director of international cooperation and tourism department Lev Zakharchyshyn told The Day. “One of them is cooperation between our emergency response services. Such activity is among NATO’s most prominent strengths. Further to it, we would like to promote cooperation between universities, involving Lviv State University of Life Safety in particular. Both projects are part of the center’s support activities. We have also agreed to establish contacts between both sides’ officials, so as to actively pursue this cooperation objective. There is no sunset clause to the memorandum. We have to understand that Ukraine, while it has not taken any definite positive decision on NATO accession, has not decided to remain outside NATO forever either. Given that NATO is more than strictly military organization, that ‘natural emergencies and human-made disasters, cooperation with the alliance will be highly useful.”

“Remember, NATO remains one of the most effective international systems,” director of the Center for Regional Studies and International Cooperation Volodymyr Hulyma maintains. “If our European integration drive will succeed in November, we will enter the security and defense discussions that are currently taking place within the European Union anyway and the crux of all these talks is precisely how to combine, organize, and use certain best elements of both NATO and the European Union’s security structures.”

The fall workshop “NATO in a Changing Global Security Environment” was organized by Lviv Ivan Franko University in general and its department of international relations in particular, the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine, and Ukraine’s ministries of foreign affairs and of education and science. According to the organizers, the event was apolitical and purely educational.

“Although Ukraine has no desire to accede to the Alliance currently, NATO member nations agreed to maintain the intense tactical cooperation with Ukraine as agreed at the Bucharest summit in 2008. This implies further implementation of annual national programs with all their planned measures, that is, providing practical advice and assistance as well as addressing common security challenges,” director Nemylivska said at the workshop’s opening ceremony.