France comments on Ukraine’s prospects in NATO – RT Russia and the former Soviet Union
kyiv’s membership of the US-led military bloc is not on the table for now, the French foreign ministry spokeswoman said.
Ukraine’s NATO membership is not being discussed at the moment, given the ongoing hostilities between Moscow and kyiv, the French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Saturday.
Speaking to Russian channel RTVI, Anne-Claire Legendre was asked about Ukraine’s candidacies to join the European Union and the US-led military alliance. She described the EU’s decision to grant candidate status to Ukraine in June 2022 as “Very important,” send a signal “serious political support” for the Cape of kyiv and reflecting the desire of Ukrainians to adhere to European values.
However, she refrained from giving exact dates for Kyiv to join the EU, saying Brussels is formulating a roadmap that could take “more or less time”. The spokesperson noted that EU members were seeking to “to move towards a very specific cooperation with our Ukrainian friends.”
The spokesperson’s comments come after the European Commission determined on Thursday that Ukraine was only one “early stage” to be prepared to meet EU standards in many key areas. The bloc’s top executive body pointed in particular to Kyiv’s shortcomings in labor and gender equality legislation.
Legendre also signaled that Ukraine should not expect to join NATO in the near future, warning that membership is “is not on the agenda now. There is a war going on now. However, she stressed that the alliance still adheres to its open-door policy, citing the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which state that each state is free to choose its own allies.
Ukraine’s potential NATO membership has long been a major security concern for Russia and has been cited as one of the factors prompting Moscow to launch its military operation in February 2022.
In December 2021, before full-scale hostilities broke out, Moscow submitted draft documents on security guarantees to NATO and the United States, demanding that Ukraine be prevented from entering the alliance and insisting that the bloc itself withdraw to the 1997 borders. The initiative, however, was rebuffed.
RT
