NATO Information Landing

Donetsk recently hosted a regional seminar for the mass media, Ukraine and NATO After the Prague Summit: New Dimensions of Partnership. It was organized jointly by the Democracy and Development Center for Political and Information Technologies, NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine, and the State Committee for Radio and Television under the auspices of the Department for the Press and Information at the Donetsk Oblast State Administration. As NATO Information and Documentation Center Director Michelle Durres put it figuratively, presently NATO is “a plant producing security.” According to him, the alliance is undergoing active transformations: “It’s time to build an ark of stable civilized states that will be able to guarantee security in their respective regions.”

Mr. Durres called attention to the fact that the center he is managing is by no means involved in propaganda or advertising for the alliance. It is up to Ukraine to decide whether it should join NATO or not. If one is to speak about Ukrainian public opinion of NATO, the picture is quite gloomy. Nearly half the respondents in Donetsk consider NATO an aggressive military bloc (it should be mentioned that official public opinion polls results were similar in the not so distant past when NATO involvement in Yugoslavia was considered an invasion by 36% and a war crime by 19.3% of Ukrainians). Over half the respondents believe that Ukraine should never join NATO, a quarter think it should join it in five to ten years, and about 10% believe that this should not happen sooner than ten to fifteen years from now. Notably, a mere 4% of Ukrainians called NATO a leading organization serving to ensure security in Europe. Incidentally, nearly 40% or the respondents assign this role to the UN and 25% to the OSCE.

Michelle Durres called a misconception the belief that NATO is a military bloc and that if Ukraine joins it, tanks will rumble through the streets and civilians will carry weapons. Experts believe that the world has changed and security — aside from its military aspect — includes political, economic, social, and environmental issues. Incidentally, maybe for this very reason holding the seminar in the Donbas can be considered symbolic.