Ukraine's Foreign Minister says NATO lacks political will to decide on Ukraine's accession
Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, believes that NATO currently lacks the political will to make a decision on Ukraine’s accession.
Source: Kuleba in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour
Details: Kuleba said that he advised everyone saying that Ukraine’s accession is impossible to consider Finland’s example. It was impossible to imagine Finland’s accession to NATO a year ago, he said, but once political will was there, Finland was able to join the Alliance. He stressed that everything was possible when there is political will, adding that NATO currently lacks it.
Kuleba also said that Ukraine’s accession to NATO will not stop the war, but it will help prevent future wars in the Euro-Atlantic area.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister explained that while Ukraine remains NATO’s close friend, respected ally, special partner, or there is some other "surrogate" form of cooperation between Ukraine and the Alliance, there will be a risk that Russian aggression against Ukraine will happen again. That is why, according to Kuleba, it is strategically savvy to rule this risk out. Whatever the price of preserving peace, the price of restoring peace is always higher, he argued.
Kuleba recalled that the ally states agreed that Ukraine will be a NATO member in Bucharest in 2008. Since then, he said, the organisation keeps repeating this like a mantra, reaffirming its "open doors" policy.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister added that there had been many arguments and excuses about why Ukraine should not be a member of NATO, but history has proven them all wrong. That is why it was time for Ukraine to join NATO, he concluded.
Background:
- Kuleba wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine that NATO members should take a historic step toward admitting Ukraine at the alliance’s upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithuania: "Ukraine needs NATO, and NATO needs Ukraine."
- Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia said that NATO "must be ready to provide security guarantees, beyond political assurances, that prevent Ukraine from becoming a gray zone once and for all."
- Leaders of the Baltic states want to ensure that specific steps towards Ukraine’s accession to NATO will be taken at the Vilnius summit.
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