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No discussions of NATO invitation for Ukraine, only weapons supplies — bloc’s chief

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte reiterated that NATO allies agreed that "the future of Ukraine is in NATO"

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte Manon Cruz/ Pool Photo via AP

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

© Manon Cruz/ Pool Photo via AP

BRUSSELS, December 3. /TASS/. The North Atlantic Alliance is not discussing a membership invitation for Ukraine, only weapons supplies, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said at a press conference ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

"What I would think that we have to concentrate and we will concentrate over the 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," he pointed out, when asked if NATO’s top diplomats intended to invite Kiev to join the bloc.

Rutte reiterated that NATO allies agreed that "the future of Ukraine is in NATO." "During the Washington summit, we agreed on the irreversible path towards NATO," he noted, adding that the alliance had been working to build a bridge for Ukraine’s membership. "This is happening step by step," Rutte stressed.

Ukraine’s NATO aspirations

The Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly said that Kiev wanted to become a NATO member in the near future. However, Vladimir Zelensky said on December 1 that Ukraine would never accept a partial invitation, even though he did not rule out that the ‘hot phase’ of the conflict could end if the Kiev-controlled part of the country was placed under NATO’s "umbrella." Still, Zelensky admitted that Ukraine had not received any proposals on the matter.

At a NATO summit in Vilnius in the summer of 2023, G7 countries declared their intention to enter into security agreements with Kiev to offset the lack of a NATO membership invitation. Since then, Ukraine has signed over a dozen bilateral agreements. According to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, these documents do not contain any guarantees, but merely state what Kiev's allies are already doing and do not promise anything beyond that.

Earlier, Russian President Putin outlined his conditions for peace, which include Ukraine withdrawing its forces from Donbass and Novorossiya, as well as abandoning any intentions to join NATO. Moscow also demands the removal of all Western sanctions on Russia and guarantees of Ukraine’s non-aligned, non-nuclear status.

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