Russia says NATO must disavow 2008 membership promise to Ukraine

Russia wants NATO to disavow its 2008 promise to one day give Ukraine membership of the U.S.-led military alliance, and for Ukraine to agree to neutrality, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday.

NATO membership for Ukraine is unacceptable for Russia, but a simple refusal to let it join is also now insufficient for Moscow, she said.

"It is worth noting that a refusal to accept Kyiv into NATO is not enough now," Zakharova said in response to a question from Reuters. "The alliance must disavow the Bucharest promises of 2008."

"Otherwise, this problem will continue to poison the atmosphere on the European continent," she said.

Zakharova said that Ukraine needed to return to the position of its 1990 declaration of sovereignty from the Soviet Union, in which Kyiv said that it would become a permanently neutral state, not participate in military blocs and remain nuclear-free.

"What Ukraine needs to do is return to the origins of its own statehood and follow the letter and spirit of the documents," Zakharova said.

"This would be the best guarantee of its security," she said, adding that neither NATO membership nor Western intervention "under the guise of a peacekeeping contingent" could give Ukraine such security.

At a summit in Bucharest in April 2008, NATO declared that both Ukraine and Georgia would join the U.S.-led defense alliance - but gave them no timetable or plan for how to get there.



Reuters