MOSCOW, December 17. /TASS/. Ukraine would have been admitted to NATO immediately should this depend on Poland only, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
"If it depended on Poland, this [Ukraine’s joining NATO] would have taken not more than a day," he said after talks with Vladimir Zelensky in Lvov. "We will do our best to make the prospects for Ukraine’s membership in NATO more real, but we know that this will not be easy."
Discussions around a potential invitation to NATO has invigorated in Ukraine in recent time. In a bid to secure this, Zelensky promised that in case it is admitted to the alliance it would not insists on triggering article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which envisages that an armed attack on one or more of the parties to it is deemed as an attack on them all.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin set forth the conditions for resolving the situation in Ukraine, which included Ukraine withdrawing troops from Donbass and Novorossia and abandoning plans to join NATO. In addition, Moscow insists that all Western sanctions be lifted and Ukraine’s non-bloc and non-nuclear status be guaranteed.