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US should exclude issue of Ukraine's NATO accession from agenda, says German politician

Sahra Wagenknecht added that Europeans and Vladimir Zelensky "must also rule out the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO to demonstrate that they genuinely want peace"

BERLIN, August 15. /TASS/. Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the German Reason and Justice (BSW) party, says that the US should give Russia assurances that Ukraine will not be brought into NATO during the upcoming summit in Alaska.

"In Alaska, the US must take Ukraine’s NATO membership off the table," Wagenknecht told Rheinische Post ahead of the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US leader Donald Trump. "Doing so would be a good faith move to start real negotiations. There will likely be no peace as long as NATO membership or the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine remains on the table," she emphasized.

Wagenknecht added that Europeans and Vladimir Zelensky "must also rule out the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO to demonstrate that they genuinely want peace."

Thus, the BSW leader aligns with Russia’s position that NATO’s eastward expansion is the root cause of the current conflict in Ukraine.

The upcoming summit between Putin and Trump is scheduled for August 15 in Anchorage, Alaska. According to Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov, the meeting will commence at 10:30 p.m. Moscow time (+3 GMT) with a one-on-one conversation. The primary focus will be on the Ukrainian crisis, but broader issues related to peace, security, and pressing regional and international concerns will also be discussed. This will mark the first face-to-face encounter between the two leaders since June 2021, when Putin met with then-US President Joe Biden in Geneva. Notably, Putin will be the first Russian leader to visit Alaska in history.

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