This week's NATO summit in Romania will be Vladimir Putin's last appearance at a top-level international forum before he steps down as Russian president, still pushing to halt NATO's expansion into the stomping grounds of the former Soviet Union. The Kremlin realizes it doesn't have the power to force the West to reverse its recognition of Kosovo's independence or persuade Washington to drop its plan to deploy missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic...

President Bush's two-day visit to Kiev on the eve of NATO's April 2-4 summit in Bucharest, Romania, is his first visit to Ukraine and therefore long overdue. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, visited Ukraine on three occasions. Bush's visit to Ukraine ahead of the NATO summit is seen as a strong show of U.S. support for NATO enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia...

US President George Bush is set to offer backing to Ukraine's membership of Nato when on a visit to the former Soviet republic. The eastward expansion of the military alliance has divided Nato members due to fierce opposition from Moscow. Mr Bush will go on to attend his final Nato summit in Bucharest, Romania, at which troop commitments to Afghanistan are likely to be discussed...

President Bush has told NATO members he wants to expand the alliance to include three Balkan countries and put Ukraine and Georgia on track for membership. Bush probably will get some of what he wants at the NATO summit Tuesday through Thursday in Bucharest, Romania. But with only nine months left in his term, Bush may find his ability diminished to persuade European leaders, just as it is with Congress...

Thousands of anti-NATO activists rallied Saturday in the Crimean city of Simferopol, protesting Ukraine's possible membership in the alliance and the upcoming visit of U.S. President George W. Bush. Supporters of a pro-Russian party protested against Ukraine's request for a NATO Membership Action Plan, a key step toward joining the alliance, according to television footage shown on Channel 5...

Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev is citing low popular support for NATO membership in Ukraine as his argument against NATO approval of a Ukrainian Membership Action Plan (MAP) at NATO’s April 2-4 summit (Interfax, Financial Times, March 26). This thesis is common to the Russian and German governments...

Next week Romania's capital of Bucharest will host representatives from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 26 member nations. There the alliance will make critical choices about its mission in Afghanistan and expanding to several former Soviet-bloc nations. These decisions need not and should not be further delayed for yet more "meetings" and "consultations" in capitals across Europe. Today NATO needs clarity of purpose...

President Bush announced yesterday that he will make an unexpected trip to Russia after a NATO summit next week to meet with President Vladimir Putin in hopes of repairing relations that have grown strained over missile defense, Kosovo independence and NATO expansion. The decision surprised even some key U.S. officials and set both governments scrambling to accommodate the last-minute visit and put together an agreement to justify it...

With NATO's summit in Bucharest approaching on April 2, Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported that the Kremlin would be looking for a certain quid pro quo with the Atlantic alliance -- Moscow's help on Afghanistan in exchange for a promise to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of NATO. On March 14, the Polish daily cited Washington-based sources as saying Russia would agree to send troops to Afghanistan and support operations against the Taliban. In exchange, President Vladimir Putin reportedly sought a NATO promise not to approve a so-called Membership Action Plan for either Ukraine or Georgia...

Ahead of NATO’s April 2-4 Bucharest Summit, the alliance is preoccupied with maintaining the principles on which it interacts with aspirant countries. The core principles may be summed up as: the open door, membership action plans on the road to that open door, merit-based assessment of aspirant countries, and no external inputs into Allied decisions on membership or membership prospects...