Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has said the country will never become a member of NATO. Speaking at a meeting of Ukrainian ambassadors in Kyiv on August 3, Zaluzhnyi said: “I know NATO very well. For about 12 years I personally worked on making sure we met NATO standards, and every year I heard tales about how we would join NATO any day now. Despite that assessment of membership prospects, Zaluzhnyi stressed that Ukraine still requires technologies currently held by NATO countries, particularly in ballistic-missile defence and space. NATO membership remains a formal strategic goal written into Ukraine’s constitution, and successive alliance summits had repeated that Ukraine’s future is inside the organisation.