By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Monday NATO membership for Ukraine was not under discussion but that there was a discussion on “Article 5” type security guarantees for the country that Russia invaded in February 2022.
KEY QUOTES
“The situation is this – that the U.S. and some other countries have said that they are against NATO membership for Ukraine. The official NATO position … is that there is an irreversible path for Ukraine into NATO,” Rutte said during an interview on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” show.
“But what we are discussing here is not NATO membership, what we are discussing here is Article 5 type of security guarantees for Ukraine and what exactly they will entail will now be more specifically discussed.”
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty enshrines the principle of collective defense, in which an attack on any of its 32 members is considered an attack on all. Joining the Atlantic alliance is a strategic objective for Kyiv that is enshrined in the country’s constitution.
Rutte’s comments noted that a security guarantee of that scale could be offered to Ukraine in lieu of NATO membership, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out.
CONTEXT
After a Friday summit with Putin in Alaska, U.S. President Donald Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and NATO and European leaders at the White House on Monday.
Rutte told Fox News security guarantees for Ukraine were discussed in the meeting and that there was no discussion about boots on the ground.
Trump described Monday’s meetings as “very good” and said he called Putin to begin arrangements for a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents before a trilateral meeting that would also include Trump.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler and Stephen Coates)
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