The North Atlantic Alliance is taking over the command functions of supplying Ukraine with weapons and coordinating all military assistance efforts, said head of the Kyiv Security Forum Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at the NATO Public Forum as part of the anniversary Summit of the Alliance.

“A decision was made to create a command center on a NATO base, and the Alliance took over all key coordination functions,” the press service of the head of the Kyiv Security Forum quotes Yatsenyuk as saying.

“NATO is preparing that the leadership may change in different countries of the world and in the United States, and they are insuring themselves: they are insuring themselves about whether individual countries will help Ukraine as much as they are now,” he noted

Another positive piece of news, he said, is that NATO is focusing on long-term planning.

“The key is to provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with the necessary weapons for two things. The first is to stop Russia. And the second, which was very important to hear here from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, is to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine, that is, push Russia out of Ukrainian territories,” Yatsenyuk said.

“This is a clear signal to the war criminal Putin that he will not wait it out. And I want to hope so,” he added.

Yatsenyuk said that NATO is taking on functions in order to do the maximum to achieve interoperability between Ukraine and NATO member countries, creating a “bridge” for Ukraine to become a member of the Alliance.