Our non-aligned status has failed to guarantee Ukraine's security and needs to be repealed, says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
“It is indisputable today that Ukraine’s non-aligned status declared in 2010 has been unable and could not have been able to guarantee our country’s security and territorial integrity, and it needs to be repealed,” Poroshenko said at the Verkhovna Rada on Nov. 27.
“This position has led to great losses, and therefore we have decided to return to the course toward integration into the Euro-Atlantic security space,” he said.
Ukraine is expanding cooperation with NATO, working on interoperability of its armed forces with those of the alliance members, and reorienting itself toward NATO standards in the defense industry, he said.
“But at the same time, I am urging everyone to realize that political speculations on immediate accession to NATO are not advancing but unfortunately putting off the accession hour for Ukraine,” he said.
“It is necessary to achieve NATO membership criteria not in words but in deeds and through real work. And second, let’s be honest: we should take into consideration a very cautious attitude toward the matter by quite a large number of some of our foreign partners,” Poroshenko said.
“Once we made a statement, we immediately got the answer that Ukraine will never be a NATO member. This is not for them to decide, it’s for the Ukrainian people to decide. And it’s necessary to start not with loud statements, a lot of which have been made, but with real practical reforms,” he said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov had said earlier that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations would only complicate the situation surrounding this country rather than improve its security.
