North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Tuesday (Dec 3) sidestepped the question about war-torn Ukraine’s membership into the intergovernmental military alliance.
Secretary-General Rutte said during a press conference that the priority now must be to strengthen Ukraine’s hand in any future peace talks with Russia by sending it more weapons, the news agency Associated Press reported.
“The front is not moving eastwards. It is slowly moving westwards,” Rutte said.
“So we have to make sure that Ukraine gets into a position of strength, and then it should be for the Ukrainian government to decide on the next steps, in terms of opening peace talks and how to conduct them,” he added.
‘Ukraine will not settle for any alternatives…’
Rutte’s remarks on Tuesday came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that extending NATO membership to territory now under Kyiv’s control could end the “hot stage” of the war.
President Zelensky argued that once open conflict ends, any proposal to join NATO could be extended to all parts of the country that fall under internationally recognised borders.
Upon being pressed on this fact by reporters, Rutte said, “I would argue, let’s not have all these discussions step by step on what a peace process might look like.”
As he made these remarks, Ukrainian officials made it clear that they would not countenance any half measures or stopgap solutions on NATO membership.
In a statement, the foreign ministry said that Ukraine “will not settle for any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO.”
The ministry also cited Kyiv’s bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum.
What is the Budapest Memorandum?
In early December 1994, leaders of the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and the Russian Federation met in Hungary’s capital Budapest to pledge security assurances to Ukraine in connection with its accession to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapons state.
According to a publication by the Harvard Kennedy School, the signature of the memorandum concluded arduous negotiations that resulted in Ukraine’s agreement to relinquish the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, which the country inherited from the collapsed Soviet Union, and transfer all nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantlement.
The signatories (of the memorandum) pledged to respect Kyiv’s territorial integrity and inviolability of its borders, and to refrain from the use or threat of military force.
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Russia breached these commitments with its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and aggression in eastern Ukraine, the publication said.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian foreign ministry called the memorandum a “monument to short-sightedness in making strategic security decisions.”
“We are convinced that the only real guarantee of security for Ukraine, as well as a deterrent for further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other states, is Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the ministry statement said.
(With inputs from agencies)