State Duma reacts to Ukraine's plans to create an analog of NATO

Ukraine thinks that it needs to join NATO for peace, but Kiev's desire to join the bloc is one of the reasons for the start of hostilities. A member of the State Duma's defense committee, Andrey Kolesnik, said this on Monday, February 24, reacting to the country's plans to create an analog of the alliance.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the relevant plans, RT reports. According to him, the country will create its own military alliance if it fails to join NATO. The politician noted that Ukraine will not be able to implement such a project on its own, it will need to provide "such funding, contingents and defense production that will mean guaranteed peace," 360.ru reports.

"In order to put out the fire - you need more gasoline, that is, in order to have peace in Ukraine - you need to join NATO, because of which, by the way, everything started. This is one of the reasons for the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. This rattling of their weapons, joining NATO, they constantly trumped the destruction of the Russian-speaking population," the MP commented in a conversation with Lenta.Ru.

Kolesnik expressed confidence that the creation of a NATO analog by Ukraine is unrealistic.

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In his turn, the national security adviser to the United States president, Michael Waltz, said that the USA was not discussing Ukraine 's possible accession to the North Atlantic Alliance, the kp.ru website reported.

At the same time, he noted that the United States would support Ukraine's security guarantees from the UK and France.

On 22 February, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Ukraine was not going to join NATO, but to become a buffer zone between the alliance and Russia. According to him, the conflict arose because the alliance tried to take control over Ukrainian territory. However, the West did not take into account that Russia would not stay on the sidelines in such a development, Orban said.