Kyiv looks to enhance its security cooperation with the West:
Ukraine has created a Secretariat for Security Cooperation with NATO and the European Union.
The head of Ukraine's Security Service, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, introduced the new security body's chief, Yevhen Marchuk, on December 10.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on December 9 that Ukraine would act to abandon the neutral "nonbloc status" introduced in 2010 under then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by pro-Western protesters in February.
Marchuk, a former prime minister and defense minister, said that scrapping that neutrality would give "a new impulse" to Ukraine's cooperation with NATO and the EU.
But he said Ukraine would have to tread a "long and difficult path" before it could join NATO.
Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March and supports separatists fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine, vehemently opposes Ukraine joining NATO and wants the alliance to pledge never to accept Ukraine as a member. (UNIAN, Interfax)