Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says Ukraine rejects alternatives to NATO membership

Kiev will not agree to any other security guarantees except for full NATO membership. This is what the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on December 3 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Budapest memorandum.

"We will not agree to any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes for Ukraine's full membership in NATO," the statement said. Its text is quoted by the Ukrainian daily Strana.ua in its Telegram channel.

The statement said that Ukraine had a bitter experience of signing the Budapest memorandum, which is why it was not ready to agree to other conditions except for joining the North Atlantic alliance.

According to the document, Ukraine called on the signatories of the memorandum, the USA and the UK, as well as France and China, which joined it, to invite it to the alliance. In addition, in the statement, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also appealed to the member states of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Commenting on the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's statement, a Kremlin spokesman said that Ukraine's potential accession to NATO was unacceptable for Russia as it was a threatening event.

The UK, Russia, the USA and Ukraine signed the Budapest memorandum on December 5, 1994. The document provided guarantees of Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons.

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Earlier, on December 2, the Italian news agency Ansa reported that the meeting of NATO foreign ministers would not reach an agreement on inviting Ukraine to the alliance. In addition, it was noted that Kiev had made it clear to Western countries that it would need "at least $120bn" by 2025. This exceeds the amount previously agreed upon at the NATO summit in Washington.

On November 29, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term expired on May 20, said in an interview with the British television channel Sky News that he might agree to a cease-fire and giving up some territories in exchange for Ukraine's NATO membership. He said joining the North Atlantic alliance should be offered to Kiev-controlled parts of the country to end the "hot phase," provided that the NATO invitation itself recognizes Ukraine's internationally recognized borders.

Former U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, said after Zelensky's Nov. 29 statement that admitting Ukraine to NATO would be a terrible idea.

Ukraine applied to join NATO on an expedited basis on September 30, 2022. At the time, Zelensky said that in fact the country is already in the alliance and meets its standards.