Ukraine’s president reaches out to NATO after their summit on Friday. He accuses the defense alliance of giving the “green light” for bombing the country.
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has for several days asked NATO to provide a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
This means sending fighter jets from NATO into Ukraine, something NATO refuses to agree to, after the member states’ foreign ministers met on Friday.
– We are not part of this conflict, but we have a responsibility to ensure that it does not escalate and spread from Ukraine. It will be more destructive and more dangerous, said Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after the meeting.
He points out that the alliance’s task is to keep its 30 nations safe.
“Will die because of NATO”
President Zelensky is not clear on the decision.
– Today, the alliance has given the green light to the bombing of Ukrainian towns and villages, by refusing to create a no-fly zone. You could have closed the airspace, he says.
He stresses that the people who will die from the day this decision was made will also die because of NATO, according to the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrinform.
– All the people who will die from today will die because of you. Because of their weakness, because of their lack of unity, Zelensky said, according to Axios.
Furthermore, he describes the summit as weak and a lost meeting.
– We see that not everyone considers the struggle for Europe’s freedom as their main priority.
– For nine days we have witnessed a hard war. Our cities are being destroyed, our people and children, residential areas, churches, schools are being shot down. Everything that gives people a normal life is shot. NATO countries want this to continue, knowing that new bombings and casualties are inevitable, he says enthusiastically.
– We have bled for our common Europe and common freedom, he concludes.
Not NATO members
Ukraine is not a member of NATO. For a long time there has been great skepticism among the population about such a membership. The turning point in popular opinion came when Russia annexed Crimea and gave support to the pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Also within the 30 member states of NATO, there has been great skepticism about giving Ukraine membership, precisely for fear of escalating the conflict with Russia.
In 2019, the National Assembly decided that membership of NATO and the EU are strategic goals for Ukraine. An opinion poll conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in December 2021 shows that 59 percent of those polled support NATO membership. 28 percent are against. It helps little today anyway.
A few days ago, in the middle of the war, applied to the president for EU membership for Ukraine. According to an expert in the field, such a process can take several years.
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