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14:25 01 Jun 2021

Zelenskyi: there's an alternative to joining NATO

President Volodymyr Zelenskyi stated that an alternative to the Alliance was to sign an analog of the Budapest Memorandum for Ukraine.

The head of state stated this in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Rubryka reports.

Zelenskyi noted he intended to talk about such a plan with President Biden.

"Ukraine can have a Plan B. When Ukraine gets its full territorial integrity, gets its territories, it will be enshrined not in something conditional like the Budapest Memorandum, which can be violated. And there'll be serious players, the European Union, the United States, which consolidate Ukraine's status. It can really be to get out of the collapse that Europe is in now, we have an understanding of such a plan, and I can honestly say that I was going to talk about such a plan with President Biden because it is already beyond limits.

The President stressed that in the event of joining NATO, Ukraine counts on the support of the United States and the European Union in the form of security, and not through involvement in the conflict in Donbas. According to him, Ukraine doesn't intend to go to war, and the issue of NATO's protecting the country should be resolved at the level of negotiations.

At the same time, he asserts that NATO's design loses its value if it refuses to protect any member of the Alliance in the event of a conflict.

"And if some NATO countries want to see Ukraine in the Alliance, and some countries that have good relations with Russia don't want Ukraine in NATO, then again the question of this construction arises: is it so strong and powerful? I think it's the fragility of this structure. And draw a parallel with the European Union… Britain has left the EU. Has the EU become stronger without the UK? Definitely not. It's no longer the "arched" structure that is the strongest in the world," the president noted.

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