Putin Backs Ukraine’s EU Aspirations, Rejects NATO Bid

According to Rokna, citing The Guardian over in Beijing, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has met with Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, with the pair giving brief statements to the media in the last few minutes.

In his remarks, Putin said that that Moscow had never opposed Ukraine’s potential membership of the European Union, and dismissed claims that Moscow was somehow planning to attack Europe.

He argued, in comments reported by Reuters, that with Nato expanding eastwards, the alliance wanted to absorb the entire post-Soviet space, and Russia simply had to defend its interests. He also repeated that Ukrainian membership of Nato would have been unacceptable to Russia.

In his comments earlier, Fico spoke about the criticism he’s facing from other EU countries over his participation – as the only EU leader – in today’s Chinese event or the Victory Day parade in Moscow in May, but stressed he wanted to show his respect to all victims of the second world war.

Fico repeatedly stressed Slovakia’s commitment to the EU, but lamented that he didn’t understand some of its decisions.

In his comments, he pushed for normalisation of economic relations with Russia and criticised Ukraine for attacks on critical gas infrastructure carrying Russian gas to Slovakia and Hungary.

He also talked about the upcoming important decision on the EU’s membership for Ukraine and stressed that while“every country has the right to a European [membership] perspective,” “Ukraine must meet all conditions for entering the EU” so that “political criteria cannot prevail over preparation criteria" for joining the bloc.

He also repeated his longstanding position that Ukraine should not be allowed to join Nato.

Putin picked up on this theme in his remarks in response, saying Russia “highly values the independent foreign policy that you and your team, your government, are pursuing.”