Yatsenyuk: West could offer Russia deal that would include Ukraine’s membership in EU and NATO
As part of this solution, the signing of a "new agreement between Russia and NATO member states" could be proposed.
According to Censor.NET, this was stated by the chairman of the Kyiv Security Forum, Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2014-2016 Arseniy Yatsenyuk in the programme "Saturday Political Club" with Vitaliy Portnikov on the Espresso TV channel.
According to him, negotiations with Putin are currently unrealistic.
"It is hard to imagine negotiations where Russia agrees to get out of Ukrainian territories, pay reparations, Ukraine becomes a member of NATO and the EU, and Putin goes to court martial," he explained.
At the same time, Yatsenyuk added, a possible step could be for NATO and EU member states to appeal to Russia: "We have made a political decision, Ukraine will be a NATO member. That's it. We are not discussing this decision with you".
As part of this decision, he said, it could be proposed to sign, for example, "a new agreement between Russia and NATO member states, a new agreement on conventional arms control in Europe, a new START agreement on the limitation of strategic nuclear weapons; a new agreement on cybersecurity".
In addition, Western partners could offer a mechanism for compensating Ukraine for losses.
Yatsenyuk recalled that Putin once demanded that NATO not expand and withdraw its weapons from Central Europe.
The free world, the former prime minister said, could have offered its own deal, "realising that Putin would not agree": "But we would say to the world public: we would like to have these kinds of negotiations with Russia, we offered them what we can offer, and Russia refused even that."
"It would make sense if the West was ready to show such political will - the establishment of a new world order. If the West theoretically agreed to such a model, the West would be saying: we are ready to fight for a new NATO member, which is Ukraine," Yatsenyuk concluded.
