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NATO won’t offer Ukraine admission to US-led military bloc, Spain’s top diplomat says

The Spanish foreign minister reiterated that NATO was a defensive alliance

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares EPA-EFE/Quique Garcia

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares

© EPA-EFE/Quique Garcia

MADRID, May 27. /TASS/. NATO is not planning to offer membership to Ukraine, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Friday.

"[The corresponding issue] is not being raised at the moment," he said when asked whether an offer to join NATO had been presented to Ukraine.

"Ukraine is not currently requesting this," the Spanish diplomat said at an event hosted by La Vanguardia. Albares reiterated that NATO was a defensive alliance.

"The food security crisis is here already, and it is being felt in a lot of countries," the head of the Spanish Foreign Ministry said. "The food security crisis will outlast the war," he noted, asserting that the issue would be central to a UN General Assembly meeting in September. Albares also assumed the conflict around Ukraine could last for quite a while.

"We have been pushing to consider ways for <...> the huge batch of grain trapped in Ukraine to go abroad," the Spanish foreign minister added. Spain has been toiling away to come up with "technical ideas, because right now there are logistic hurdles" holding up the export of the grain, he said.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to launch a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for help from the leaders of the Donbass republics. The United States, the EU, the UK and a number of other countries retaliated with sanctions against Russian individuals and entities.

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