Ukraine categorically refuses to promise to give up its plan to join NATO and any other “guarantee” demanded by Russia, its foreign minister said on Friday, asking his allies to do the same. . Kiev, for whom such a promise is “not an option”, calls on the United States and its allies to reject the demands formulated by Moscow to ease tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian borders, through the voice of Dmytro Kouleba on the sidelines of ‘an OSCE meeting in Stockholm.
“I reject the idea that we should guarantee Russia anything. I insist: it is Russia which must guarantee that it will not continue its aggression against any country, ”he said. A commitment by Ukraine to abandon its plan to join NATO, offered in 2008 by the Western alliance but remained in limbo since, “is not an option”, he concludes, stressing that the he membership of NATO and the EU is in the Ukrainian constitution.
Moscow does not want an extension of NATO to the East
“It is absolutely inappropriate for Russia to have any influence whatsoever on decisions taken by another sovereign country, Ukraine, and by an international organization, NATO,” the minister said. During a meeting in Stockholm, the head of Russian diplomacy Sergei Lavrov had demanded Thursday from his American counterpart Antony Blinken for “security guarantees” at the Russian borders. Moscow is calling in particular for a freeze on NATO’s progress towards the east, after a large part of Eastern Europe fell into the alliance following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Dmytro Kouleba called on his Western allies not to make any such agreement with Moscow, warning that Kiev would never recognize them. “We have a golden rule in Ukrainian foreign policy: no decision on Ukraine without Ukraine. If anyone, even our closest allies, took a Ukraine-related decision behind our backs, we would not recognize this decision, ”said the Ukrainian Foreign Minister.
US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are soon to discuss directly the tensions around Ukraine, seven years after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the takeover of part of eastern Ukraine. former Soviet republic by pro-Russian separatist forces.