KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday that Russia had no right to block Kyiv’s closer ties with the NATO military alliance and any security guarantees that Moscow might seek from the West would be illegitimate.
He also said it was an open question how tough possible European Union sanctions would be on Russia if Moscow launched a new attack on Ukraine, but said that a deterrence package to ward Russia off such a move was going in the right direction.
“Russia cannot stop Ukraine from getting closer with NATO and has no right to have any say in relevant discussions,” Kuleba said in a briefing in Riga. “Any Russian proposals to discuss with NATO or the United States or any other country any so-called guarantees that the alliance would not expand to the east are illegitimate.”
(Reporting by Matthias Williams and Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Alex Richardson)
