MOSCOW, September 30 – Novosti. NATO will not enter into hostilities on the side of Kyiv, and Ukraine’s application to join the alliance is needed in order to “fix the vector of development” and speed up the supply of Western weapons, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of Vladimir Zelensky’s office, said on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine was applying to join NATO on an accelerated basis.
“I think that the war can be ended a little faster than we go through all the bureaucratic procedures (on joining NATO – ed.). No. In this way, we fix the direction of development of our security architecture, the direction where we are definitely going. This the first and key,” Podolyak said , answering the question whether NATO would participate in hostilities on the side of Kiev if Ukraine was accepted into the alliance.
“Secondly, we are thus, as it were, telling our partners – the NATO countries – we have practically declared that we will become partners in a legal sense in the near future, so let’s decide with weapons, with the amount of weapons that we need, as soon as possible. And thirdly, we want to show our partners in this way, we have already drawn the road, and in order to avoid a war, to end it sooner, the question is to speed up the transfer of this equipment to us so that we can end this war,” Podolyak added on the air of the all-Ukrainian telethon.
Russia has previously sent a note to NATO countries because of the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation stated that the NATO countries are “playing with fire” by supplying weapons to Ukraine. Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov noted that pumping Ukraine with weapons from the West does not contribute to the success of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and will have a negative effect.
