Rutte: Ukraine’s Path to NATO Membership Is Irreversible
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has stressed that the Alliance's position on Ukraine's future membership remains unchanged, despite some political statements. He said this at a press conference in Brussels after a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Ukrinform reports.
Rutte stressed that the allies adhere to the decisions taken during the Washington summit last year, according to which Ukraine's path to membership in the Alliance is irreversible. At the same time, he noted that Ukraine had never been promised that joining NATO could be part of an agreement to end the war.
He was responding to a question from journalists about whether the Alliance's previous approach remains in place amid recent statements by US officials.
‘Yes. We decided (during the summit) in Washington that Ukraine's path to NATO is irreversible. We are building a bridge with Ukraine to make Ukraine as interoperable with NATO as possible. But Ukraine has never been told that NATO membership would be part of a peace deal,’ the NATO Secretary General stressed.
Earlier, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said that Ukraine's accession to NATO was not realistic at the moment. Mike Waltz, the US National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, expressed a similar opinion, noting that this approach is shared by other NATO member states.
In turn, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the US position on Ukraine's membership in NATO ‘a big gift to the Russians’.
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