LISBON, June 23 - President Viktor Yushchenko said Monday that he believes Kiev is on target to achieve the first stage towards North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership in December.

"We are on the right road," Yushchenko said quoted by AFP during a state visit to Portugal. "I am optimistic and I think that in December, we could adopt the Membership Action Plan.

"The stages laid out for adhesion between Ukraine and NATO are being rigorously followed and Alliance members who have visited Ukraine recently have been able to see us negotiate each stage successfully," he added after meeting his Portuguese counterpart Anibal Cavaco Silva.

The head of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said last week that he would do his best to try and secure a consensus among the organization's 26 members for backing Ukrainian entry, in the face of strong Russian opposition.

"I do not sell coffee machines, so I cannot give a guarantee unfortunately," Scheffer added.

NATO leaders rejected a bid by Ukraine for approval of its Membership Action Plan at a summit meeting in Bucharest in April, but held out the prospect of a green light come the next meeting of NATO foreign ministers before Christmas.

Meanwhile, Russia has been considering ways to respond to Ukraine’s possible accession to the alliance, while Russian analysts said the move’s impact on Russia will be huge.

“First, it will encounter military consequences,” Ilya Kramnik, a military analyst with RIA Novosti, Russia’s state-owned news agency, said. “Tensions on Russia's western borders will rapidly go up.”

He said that NATO’s tactical aircraft can currently reach Moscow within an hour, but with Ukraine’s entry to the alliance the time will be reduced to 20-25 minutes, increasing the gap in NATO and Russia’s military power.

Political consequences would be closely linked with the military ones as tensions between Russia and the West would probably escalate and the political climate would finally slide to the worst times of the Cold War.

“Confrontation in Europe would be tense, but its front would move closer to the former Soviet territory,” Kramnik said.

However, the very fact that Ukraine's NATO entry would give a legal seal to the new geopolitical reality is its most important aftermath.

“Russia's more than 300-year-old dominance over the former Kievan Rus, which allowed it to consider itself a leader, consolidator and protector of east Slavic civilization, will be left in the past,” Kramnik said.

“The Russian leaders are not likely to consider such a scenario, but there is no doubt that Russia will use all political and economic levers in order to keep Ukraine at least neutral, and at best, to strengthen its influence there.” (afp/tl/ez)