"Ukraine applied to join the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned, was elected President. Amid the Euromaidan unrest, Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014. The interim Yatsenyuk Government which came to power, initially said, with reference to the country's non-aligned status, that it had no plans to join NATO. However, following the Russian military invasion in Ukraine and parliamentary elections in October 2014, the new government made joining NATO a priority.

Russia's reaction to the 2008 plan of the then Ukrainian Government to join MAP was hostile. Nevertheless, the following year, NATO spokesman said that despite Russian opposition to NATO's eastward expansion the alliance's door remained open to those who met the criteria.

According to polls conducted between 2005 and 2013, Ukrainian public support of NATO membership remained low. However, since Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, public support for Ukrainian membership in NATO has risen greatly. Since June 2014, polls showed that about 50% of those asked supported Ukrainian NATO membership. Some 69 percent of Ukrainians want to join NATO, according to a June 2017 poll by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, compared to 28 percent support in 2012 when Yanukovich was in power." - [link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]