Stockholm
Ukraine rejects any efforts to get it to scrap its plans to join NATO as well as any “guarantee” sought by Russia to ease tensions on the border, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told AFP on Friday.
Moscow wants to see an end to NATO’s eastward expansion, af-ter much of Eastern Europe joined the alliance following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday called on his US counterpart Antony Blinken to provide “security guarantees” that NATO would not come closer to Russia’s borders.
Agreeing to abandon its plans to join the alliance “is not an op-tion” for Kiev, Kuleba told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of an OSCE meeting in Stockholm.
“I reject this idea that we have to guarantee anything to Russia. I insist that it’s Russia who has to guarantee that it will not continue its aggression against any coun-try,” he said.
NATO officially opened the door to Ukraine membership in 2008, though no progress has been made since.—APP
