Russia is to blame for Yushchenko’s wish to send Ukraine to NATO – analyst

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Ukrainian officials are trying to send the country to NATO in order to put the commitments to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity on the alliance, political analyst from Gardarika Corp. Konstantin Matviyenko told a REGNUM correspondent today, on January 18.

The expert noted that “despite confidence of the statesmen in effectiveness of the measure, if one tries to model future of the alliance, one will see that such guarantees of integrity provided by NATO only are not enough.” Matviyenko also said that by its actions, Russia is pushing Ukraine most of all. “When Ukraine was abandoning its nuclear weapons, as it was posing a real threat to the world, it was not clear how the new political regime would be forming in the country and whether it would be able to provide correct and secure exploitation of the weapons, and the USA, the European Union and Russia stepped forward as guarantors of the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for elimination of its nuclear potential. We cannot claim that the pledge was not fulfilled, except for occasions when Russia started presenting absolutely ungrounded claims regarding Tuzla Island and navigation systems in Crimea. Here it comes that today the only country that took real steps regarding threats to Ukraine’s territorial integrity is Russia,” the analyst concluded.