Mikheil Saakashvili: Vilnius is a victory. Bucharest was a defeat

 WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2023, 2:10 p.m

This handwritten text was sent by the former president of Georgia to the editor-in-chief of UP through his friends. The author's spelling has been preserved.

Google translate from Ukrainian: 

 

I was in Bucharest, so Vilnius is not Bucharest at all. Bucharest was a road to nowhere. Vilnius directly leads to Ukraine's membership (in NATO - ed.) in Washington next year, when President Biden expects to go to the elections on the platform of Ukrainian victory, Russian defeat and NATO expansion.

In 2008, our Western partners asked me to ask President Yushchenko to say that Ukraine is satisfied with Bucharest's formulation, which he did half-heartedly. And I did the same. Such were the rules of the game then, since there was no war yet

Now no one has the right to demand diplomacy from President Zelensky. He is a heroic leader of a heroic country at war.

That is why I consider this summit extremely successful for Ukraine. First of all, it was a completely Ukrainian summit. The NATO world revolved around Ukraine, and that is worth a lot.

The leading Western countries competed with each other not to come to Vilnius empty-handed. Some arrived with long-range missiles, some with hundreds of millions of additional military aid.

From today, the format of the Ukraine-NATO Council will come into force, which will allow Ukraine to use the legal mechanism of the Alliance at any time. Ukraine is really becoming part of the NATO structure and Ukraine's word is becoming very high.

Ukraine is on the accelerated path to membership, and the main achievement for us is that we have removed the requirement for a membership action plan (hereafter referred to as the MAP). Everything is very simple - if the MAP were left as a requirement for Ukraine - it would be at least another 2-3 years of bureaucratic procedures on the way to NATO membership.

And now we were given the procedure of Finland and Sweden. And if there is political will, this is a matter of a few weeks. And after the Ukrainian victory, the political will will be automatic. It is necessary to emphasize separately the discussions on security guarantees - and this is definitely not Budapest.

Therefore, Ukraine won a historic diplomatic victory in Vilnius. Now the main thing is to continue our positive trend at the front and bring it to a victorious end.

And Zelensky really just shone in Vilnius. There are no real leaders left in the world. He really became the leader of the free world and one cannot help but be proud of this. I was really overwhelmed by this emotion when I watched the report with the raising of the flag from Vilnius.

Mikheil Saakashvili