The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) says a bilateral security agreement between Germany and Ukraine will be signed on 16 February during the Munich Security Conference in Berlin, citing its sources in German “government circles.”
The planned agreement is a component of a broader network of bilateral security pacts aimed at bolstering Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression, as long as the country is not yet a member of NATO. This strategic decision was reached during discussions on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius in July 2013. The G7 group serves as the overarching framework for establishing this security arrangement.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna, responsible for integration into the EU and NATO, told FAZ on 2 February that a Ukrainian delegation had worked out a “draft agreement on bilateral security guarantees” with the German side in Berlin the previous day. The agreement’s text “has not yet been finalized, but is largely complete,” according to her, FAZ says.