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Gorbachev recommends Ukraine enshrine non-bloc status in constitution

The last leader of the USSR stressed that first of all the February 2015 Minsk peace agreements must be implemented

Ukraine's President Pyotr Poroshenko and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg (archive) Mikhail Palinchak/TASS

Ukraine's President Pyotr Poroshenko and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg (archive)

© Mikhail Palinchak/TASS

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MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/. Ukraine needs to become a democratic country with a non-bloc status, former Soviet leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper published on Thursday.

Expressing his view on how the current conflict in eastern Ukraine can be resolved, Gorbachev said first of all the February 2015 Minsk peace agreements must be implemented.

"What then? Of course, it’s up to the Ukrainian people to decide. But I’m sure: it is in their interests that Ukraine is democratic and non-aligned. This status should be enshrined in the constitution and with international guarantees," he recommended.

"I mean something like a State Treaty signed with Austria in 1955," the former Soviet leader explained.

The Austrian State Treaty proclaimed Austria as a sovereign, neutral and non-bloc country. The document was signed in May 1955 in Vienna with the Allied occupying powers - France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result of the treaty, the Allies left Austria’s territory.

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