BRUSSELS, October 17. /TASS/. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has admitted that Ukraine will not be the next country to join NATO.

"Yes, in the future NATO will have a 33rd or 34th member, we will have Ukraine. At the moment it seems that Ukraine will be number 33, but maybe somebody else pops in front of it. But Ukraine will be a member of NATO in the future," he said upon his arrival at the NATO defense ministers' meeting, which will also include a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council (NUC). Rutte added that the alliance aims to make Kiev's path to NATO irreversible.

Responding to journalists' questions about Zelensky's calls to invite Kiev to join NATO even before the end of the conflict as the highest form of security guarantees, Rutte opined that the best guarantees are arms supplies and bilateral security agreements between Ukraine and NATO countries.

The bloc currently includes 32 countries. Finland became the 31st NATO member, while Sweden became the 32nd.