2008 Bucharest summit marks Ukraine's biggest geopolitical mistake - ex-President Yushchenko

He explained what he considers the country’s biggest geopolitical defeat since independence in a special Independence Day project, assessing the country’s key victories and defeats over the past 34 years.

"The Bucharest summit was a catastrophic display of short-sightedness by NATO members who listened too closely to Russian diplomacy," he said.

"Symbolically, Putin was present — to personally oversee the dismantling of Ukraine’s and Georgia’s hopes for Euro-Atlantic integration.

“The United States supported a MAP decision in Bucharest, but France and Germany, under obvious Russian influence, insisted this step was premature,” Yushchenko recalled.

In his view, the summit in Romania marked the first time Washington’s position was ignored by Europe’s participants in the Alliance. This created a dangerous precedent that Moscow quickly exploited: just four months later, on Aug. 8, 2008, Russia’s army invaded Georgia.

Yushchenko is convinced that this invasion would never have happened had Georgia and Ukraine been given a concrete membership prospect in NATO.

“The Moscow-friendly stance of politicians, namely, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy effectively opened the way to Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine,” the third president concluded.