NATO meeting will discuss aid for Ukraine, not membership – NATO Secretary General
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has stressed that Ukraine's partners hear its pleas for membership and are not backing down from their plans, but the purpose of the Alliance’s December meeting is different.
Source: Mark Rutte at a press conference in Brussels ahead of the NATO ministerial meeting that opens on Tuesday, as reported by European Pravda
Details: The NATO Secretary General confirmed the Alliance's unwavering position on Ukraine's membership prospects. "Allies agree that the future of Ukraine is NATO," Mark Rutte said, adding that in line with the decision of the Washington Summit, NATO partners have been "building a bridge" to membership in their relations with Ukraine.
However, Rutte does not expect this issue to be discussed in the coming days. Instead, the Alliance will be focusing on getting military aid to Ukraine.
Quote from Rutte: "We will concentrate over these next two days very much on what is necessary now… And what is necessary now is to make sure that military aid will go to Ukraine because that is now crucial for them; if they decide to do so and are into talks with Russians one day, they will do this on the position of strength."
What Ukraine needs now, Rutte says, is "more military aid, and less discussions on what the peace process would look like".
Background:
- On the eve of the Brussels meeting, Ukraine said it was refusing to accept guarantees that are substitutes for NATO membership.
- Earlier, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said for the first time that Ukraine could join NATO with Article 5 partially in force, but this idea has not yet been set out in detail.
- It should be noted that this week, the US denied reports on the possibility of Ukraine returning nuclear weapons to its arsenal.
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