Stoltenberg announced the informal agreement of all NATO members to accept Ukraine into the alliance

All NATO allies agree that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said ahead of a meeting of the Ukrainian Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, transmits sky news.

Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov the day before declaredthat the exclusion of the possibility of Ukraine’s accession to NATO is still one of the goals of the special operation. “Because otherwise it will pose a serious, significant danger to our country, to the security of our country,” he said. Peskov also did not give an assessment of the prospects for Ukraine’s entry into NATO, stressing that there is no such assessment in the Kremlin.

On September 30 last year, in response to the admission of the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into Russia, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky informedthat Ukraine will apply for NATO membership in an expedited manner. According to him, de facto Kyiv “has already gone its way to NATO” and “proved compatibility with the standards of the alliance.” Stoltenberg then noted that the alliance “supports Ukraine’s right to choose its own path,” but the decision to join the alliance must be approved by all its members.

The NATO website emphasizes that Ukraine is not a member of the alliance, at the same time it has the status of a “NATO partner country”, which means Ukraine’s close cooperation with the alliance.

In early April, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary, Peter Szijjártó declaredthat it is “completely unrealistic” to talk about Ukraine’s membership in NATO. As the politician noted, it is necessary to refrain from decisions leading to an escalation of the conflict.

Last fall, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko emphasizedthat Ukraine’s entry into NATO in the current situation is an irrational step, and the expansion of the bloc does not lead to strengthening the security of the alliance. Grushko recalled that Russia had warned about the danger of Ukraine joining NATO even before the Bucharest summit in 2008, at which it was decided that Georgia and Ukraine could become members of the alliance.