Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Ukraine’s future membership of NATO poses a threat to Russia and that that possibility was one of the causes of the war against the neighboring country.
“With regard to Ukraine’s accession to NATO, we have stated on several occasions that this is, of course, a threat to Russia’s security. And, in fact, one of the causes of the special military operation [designação usada pelo Kremlin para a invasão da Ucrânia em 2022] is the threat of Ukraine joining NATO,” Putin said in remarks on Russian public television.
The Russian leader expressed his belief that membership in NATO “will not increase the security of Ukraine itself, it will make the world more vulnerable and lead to additional tensions at the international level”.
“That’s why I don’t think there is anything positive. The views are known and have been expressed a long time ago,” he added.
The Kremlin leader noted that Moscow is not opposed to discussing security guarantees for Ukraine “but with mandatory security guarantees for Russia”.
“Each country has the right to guarantee its security, and of course it has the right to choose the way it deems most correct to achieve this goal,” he said.
However, he insisted that “there is one single limitation, related to the fact that when security is guaranteed for one country, no threats should be generated for another country”.
“Therefore, we assume that this principle, which has been repeatedly stated in various international documents, will be taken into account,” he said.
Putin recalled that the April 2022 draft agreement in Istanbul to end the war “has been thrown into the trash by the Kiev regime, despite expressing in detail the issues related to the security of Ukraine” , a country that refuses to admit its post-invasion territories and even intends to regain control of the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
“We would have to consider whether we agreed with everything that was expressed there, but I believe that in general terms it was an acceptable document,” he said, pointing out that Russia is not against the debate on security guarantees.
At the same time, Putin also threatened to suspend the country’s participation in the agreement on the export of grains via the Black Sea if the Russian part of the treaty is not respected.
“We can suspend our participation in that agreement. If we are told that everything we have been promised will be fulfilled, let them do that first and then we will rejoin the treaty,” Putin said in a commentary on state television .
The Kremlin leader insisted that the renewal of the agreement remains conditional on the fulfillment of promises about the export of his food and fertilizer.
“We will extend it only if the promises made to us are fulfilled. There are still a few days to go,” Putin assured, and when the durability of the current agreement expires next Monday.
Referring to the letter from UN Secretary-General António Guterres sent this week to the Russian leader proposing to keep the agreement in force, Putin said he had not yet seen it.
“I haven’t seen that new letter yet,” he said, adding that Russia remains in contact with the UN about this situation.
Earlier, Guterres proposed a deal to facilitate Russian financial transactions in exchange for extending the Black Sea Initiative.
This project consists of two parts, one to facilitate the export of Ukrainian grains and another to do the same with Russian grains and fertilizers, but Russia has stated from the first that this second part has never been implemented.
Source: DN
