Head of Ukraine's mission to NATO Natalia Halibarenko says the Annual National Programme (ANP), the goal of which is to reform Ukraine to achieve NATO criteria, will be adapted and adopted by the end of 2023.

Communicating with Ukrainian journalists in Brussels, the diplomat said even before the start of the war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the need was identified to revise the Annual National Programme, which "for various reasons became difficult both for implementation and for monitoring and even to report to the Alliance on progress."

"Then the war began, and this issue fell off the top of our agenda for some time. Therefore, when my allies and I started to discuss the issue of how Ukraine would continue reforms, we came to the conclusion that the best option was to follow a pattern that was in ANP, if only because the accession negotiations are based on the same structure that ANP has: it's the same five chapters in which you report on the implementation of reforms. Only this time we want it to be a short document with a list of reforms that are needed to join NATO, and which should not duplicate our obligations within the EU," Halibarenko said.

According to her, the adapted ANP will consist of basic provisions that will spell out "clear criteria" that will allow Ukraine to talk about the implementation of certain reforms.

The head of the Ukrainian mission to NATO also said the draft ANP developed by the Ukrainian side will be presented to NATO for further assessment and recommendations. "The plan is that we will present our project, after that we will receive the recommendations of the Alliance, and after we take them into account, we will come up with a consolidated version and approve it at a meeting of foreign ministers, which will be held in November with the participation of (the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine) Dmytro Kuleba. This is the plan we have," Halibarenko said.