NATO membership would exacerbate Ukraine's crisis, Russia warns

Russia has warned that Ukraine's potential accession to the Western military alliance of NATO would exacerbate the ongoing conflict in the Russian-speaking east of the country.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday that several million pro-Russia residents in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region considered joining the Western alliance "deeply unacceptable."

"We deeply doubt that it (Ukraine's admission to NATO) will somehow help Ukraine to deal with its internal problem. From our point of view, it will only exacerbate the situation further because people's opinions cannot be overlooked in any way when you talk about joining NATO," Peskov stated, adding, "And if you ask opinions of several million people in the self-proclaimed republics, you will understand that such a membership in NATO is deeply unacceptable for these people."

The conflict in the Donbass began in 2014, after a wave of protests in Ukraine overthrew a democratically-elected pro-Russia government and replaced it with a pro-West administration. The majority of the residents in the eastern region refused to endorse the new administration.

That new government then began a crackdown on the mainly ethnic Russians in the east, who in turn took up arms and turned the two regions of Donetsk and Lugansk — collectively known as the Donbass — into self-proclaimed republics.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Moscow of having a hand in the crisis. Moscow denies the allegation.

Peskov said there was no sign that Kiev intended "to calm down" and "take control of its armed forces" in the conflict.

"The main thing is that nothing provokes military hostilities of the Ukrainian armed forces against their own people, against people who live in the self-proclaimed republics," the Russian official said.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to speed up his country's membership process in the military alliance.

"NATO is the only way to end the war in Donbass," Zelensky, a former comedian who was elected president in 2019, insisted to Stoltenberg in a phone call.

A membership action plan laying out Ukraine's entry path into the alliance "will be a real signal for Russia," he said.

Zelenskiy also called on NATO member states to increase their military presence in the Black Sea region south of Ukraine.

Peskov further said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had discussed the dire situation in eastern Ukraine with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Also on Monday, Peskov said that a recent Russian military buildup near the Ukrainian border posed no military threat to Ukraine. "Russia does not pose any threat to any country in the world," he said.

In a tweet, Stoltenberg, the NATO chief, had expressed "serious concern about Russia's military activities in and around Ukraine & ongoing ceasefire violations" in the conflict-stricken eastern Donbass region.

The Kremlin has said that the recent troop and military hardware movements near Ukraine are aimed at ensuring Russia's own security. Peskov had said earlier that the deployments were in response to "increased activity of the armed forces of NATO countries, other associations, and individual countries."

The US has delivered tons of military equipment and vehicles to the Ukrainian armed forces. According to a report run by local Ukrainian media outlets last month, 350 tons of US military equipment, including 35 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs), have been shipped to Ukraine.

The US delivered a batch of the newly-made armored military trucks back in January and Ukraine is currently in possession of hundreds of those vehicles.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced in March that an additional 125-million-dollar package had been allocated for the Ukraine military to cover training, equipment, and advisory support. In total, Washington has committed over two billion dollars in military assistance to Kiev since 2014.

Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was concerned about the statements coming out of Kiev.

Lavrov said that Moscow had discussed the matter with European leaders.

Relations between Moscow and Kiev further deteriorated when the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea rejoined Russia following a referendum in 2014. More than 90 percent of the participants in the referendum voted in favor of unification.

Later in 2015, the two sides signed a ceasefire deal in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, with French and German support. Nonetheless, both parties have on numerous occasions accused one other of violating the ceasefire.

In a related development, Kiev said on Tuesday that it wanted to have the venue of peace talks moved from Minsk, saying Belarus was under the influence of Russia. "We don't know where (the talks) could be relocated. This is the subject of discussion," Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Reznikov told Reuters.

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