NATO Secretary -General confirmed the irreversibility of Ukraine’s journey to the Alliance, but membership is not a condition for a peace agreement with Russia.
The journey of Ukraine to NATO is still irreversible, the Alliance Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed on Friday the decision that the leaders of the Member States made at the December summit in Washington. At a press conference after a meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels, however, he also reiterated that Ukraine has never been promised NATO membership as part of a possible peace agreement with Russia. Informs TASR.
NATO Member States in 2008 at the summit in Bucharest declared that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of the Alliance in the future. According to Reuters, this Declaration was a compromise between the US that both states wanted to accept to NATO, and Germany and France, who were afraid that Russia would be antimulated by such a step.
Safety guarantees for Kiev
Ukrainian officials now say that NATO membership could be an effective security guarantee for Kiev that would discourage Russia from further aggression against the neighboring country. Moscow has not disagreed with this ambition for a long time and has been one of the conditions for the end of the war to give up her.
US Defense Minister Pete Hegseth said in February that it was unrealistic for Ukraine to return to the border before 2014 and enter the Alliance.
Rutte then said that membership, and thus not mutual defense guarantees for Ukraine, NATO leaders never tied to peace negotiations. He reiterated a similar statement on Friday after the Ministerial Meeting in Brussels.
“It is so, in Washington, we decided that the journey of Ukraine to NATO is irreversible. However, it has never been promised to Ukraine that NATO membership will be part of the Peace Agreement (with Russia),” NATO chief said at a press conference.
