Enlargement of NATO

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told NATO counterparts on Tuesday he was working hard on Sweden's NATO ratification which is currently being debated by the Turkish parliament and provided a likely timeline of before year-end for the Nordic country to formally join the alliance, a senior State Department official said.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is visiting Brussels to attend the NATO foreign ministerial meetings and hold talks with allies on regional and international issues, including the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, as well as on the alliance's prospected expansion with Sweden.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and allied countries have welcomed Türkiye's decision to move forward with Sweden's accession to join the alliance after more than one year of negotiations.

"The Black Sea is very important for NATO, we are monitoring the situation there carefully", the Secretary General of the pact, Jens Stoltenberg, told the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs today.

Turkey will act to ratify Sweden's NATO membership bid in conjunction with cooperation from Stockholm in the fight against terrorism, President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted on Friday as saying.

BRUSSELS - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will meet with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Brussels on Wednesday, NATO has announced on its website.

It said joint statements by Stoltenberg and Vucic were scheduled for 7 pm and would be streamed live on the website.

In the context of Ukraine's non-admission to NATO, the spokeswoman of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, also mentioned the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vui.
She told "Russia 24" TV Channel that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, should not worry about Ukraine not being accepted into NATO, but because his country has fallen apart.

"Ukraine has the support of NATO member states". This was stated by Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov after the end of the Alliance meeting in Vilnius.

NATO leaders prepared to provide Ukraine with more military assistance for fighting Russia but only vague assurances of future membership as the alliance's summit draws to a close on July 12. 

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said that he hopes that the new positive atmosphere in the relations between Greece and Turkey is something that he and the Turkish president can build on to "make some important steps forward, which will be to the benefit of both our peoples."