NEW YORK, Sept. 21 – Ukraine will seek to strengthen its defense following the decision by the U.S. to abandon the planned missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Viktor Yushchenko said Monday.

"We have to be more about the initiatives to strengthen our defense," Yushchenko said while speaking in New York at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The comment comes as Yushchenko seeks to warn Barack Obama this week that Russia’s attack against Georgia in 2008 poses a threat to the region that European leaders still haven’t addressed.

Russia has been over the past 24 months increasing pressure on Ukraine seeking to reverse its pro-Western foreign policy course. Some analysts said the Kremlin may even try to use military force to destabilize the situation in some Ukrainian regions, and perhaps to split the country to gain control over its Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions.

The developments come as the Obama administration has pledged to “reset” relations with Russia that had been significantly strained during the George W. Bush administration.

The Obama administration announced last week it will abandon the earlier plans for building $100 billion missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had heavily opposed.

Some Ukrainian officials fear that “resetting” may eventually hurt Ukraine’s interests, a charge that has been dismissed by U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden during his trip to Kiev earlier this year.

Yushchenko, who seeks to have a meeting with Obama this week, will mention the war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008 to underscore the threat that the Kremlin poses with its increasingly assertive foreign policy.

“What happened in Georgia is not a problem of Georgia, it is a problem of the European Union,” Yushchenko said in an interview with Bloomberg on Sept. 17. “Georgia’s loss of border integrity means the same may happen in Europe. We all became more vulnerable.”

Russia sent tanks, troops and warplanes into Georgia, a former Soviet Republic seeking membership of NATO, and recognized the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign countries in the face of Western condemnation. Russia has deployed thousands of troops in the regions.

Ukraine should join NATO to protect its own borders, Yushchenko said.

Earlier this month Yushchenko ordered inspection of Ukraine’s defense capabilities after Russia had preliminary approved legislation allowing it to use force overseas for protection of its military bases and holders of Russian passports.

Ukraine harbors a major Russian naval base in Sevastopol, while thousands are thought to have Russian passports in Crimea, an autonomous republic where ethnic Russian compose at least two thirds of the population.

The developments underscore rapidly worsening relations between Ukraine and Russia as Moscow seeks to reestablish its influence on former Soviet countries, while Kiev has been seeking to have closer ties with the West.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a letter last month accused his Ukrainian counterpart of running “anti-Russian” policy, while Yushchenko said he was “disappointed” by the “unfriendly” tone of the letter. (tl/ez)