Rutte: Russia has no say in Ukraine’s NATO accession

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that Russia has no influence on the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the Alliance. He stressed that decisions on enlargement are made only by NATO member states, and Moscow cannot veto them.

Rutte said this in an interview with El Pais, Ukrinform reports.

Commenting on Russia’s efforts to block Ukraine’s accession, the Secretary General recalled that the Washington Summit recognized Ukraine’s path to NATO as irreversible. At the same time, Rutte noted that several allies, including the United States, do not yet support Kyiv’s immediate membership.

He added that within the framework of the American “peace plan”, the West should provide Ukraine with strong and reliable security guarantees – especially if NATO membership is not yet a possible option. Rutte named three components of this discussion: maintaining the combat capability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the contribution of the coalition of partner countries, and the role of the United States, which has declared its readiness to join the guarantees.

When asked whether Ukraine would be able to join NATO in the future, the Secretary General replied: The Washington Treaty allows any country in the Euro-Atlantic region to join, but without the unanimous support of the Allies, this is impossible.

Rutte also called Russia a long-term threat to Europe and added that its policies require the West to increase defense spending.

As previously reported, former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recalled in his memoirs his first visit to Ukraine in 2015, during which he met with then-President Petro Poroshenko.

As a reminder, the US has prepared a draft security guarantees for Ukraine as part of Donald Trump’s “peace initiative”.

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