Moscow claims strategic victory as NATO membership for Ukraine fades, calling It a core security demand.
The Kremlin expressed satisfaction, after General Keith Kellogg, a senior U.S. envoy, declared on Sunday that Ukraine’s accession to NATO was no longer under consideration, a position Russia has consistently cited as central to its national security concerns.
“Naturally, we view this development positively,” said Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, during a briefing with journalists. “The recognition that Ukraine’s accession to NATO is unacceptable aligns with our fundamental position – one we have maintained for years as critical to Russia’s strategic interests.”
The Russian leadership has long framed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat, particularly regarding Ukraine. Peskov reiterated that potential Ukrainian membership in the alliance represented what Moscow considers a “red line” that contributed significantly to the current conflict.
The current confrontation traces back to NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit declaration that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the alliance – a move Moscow immediately condemned as a direct challenge to its security perimeter.
When Ukraine enshrined NATO and EU membership aspirations in its constitution in 2019, Russian officials warned this crossed what Putin later called “the limits of what we can tolerate.” The February 2022 military intervention followed months of escalating rhetoric about NATO’s perceived encroachment.
While Western leaders characterize Russia’s actions as imperial revanchism, Moscow maintains it is defending legitimate security interests against an alliance that reneged on post-Cold War understandings about limiting its expansion.
“NATO’s approach to our borders created the conditions for this conflict,” Peskov stated, echoing Putin’s frequent references to broken promises from the 1990s. “What some call expansion, we view as the deliberate creation of threats along our frontier.”
The Kremlin spokesman’s comments came after various U.S. officials, including former National Security Advisor General Keith Kellogg, indicated Ukraine’s NATO prospects had effectively ended – a development Russian analysts see as validating their longstanding warnings about alliance overreach.
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