KIEV, October 3 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine is looking for new ways of cooperating with NATO without making a legally-binding declaration of its intent to join the alliance, the country's foreign ministry reported Friday.
"Ukraine must find a model for its security system. In order to join NATO, you need to have public consensus both in Ukraine and NATO. So right now we are working on new ways of cooperation without a declared intent for entry," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin was quoted as saying by the ministry's press service.
In early September, the Ukrainian government approved legislation to change the country's "non-bloc" status and begin efforts to join NATO. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that the country's goal is "to receive a special status between Ukraine and NATO."
On September 18, soon after a meeting with US President Barack Obama, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told journalists that his American counterpart "said no" to his plea for Ukraine's "special" security status outside the military bloc. A day earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that nobody, including the western states, would allow Ukraine to revoke its non-nuclear status.
On December 1994, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum providing security assurances against the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territory or political independence. Following the deal, Ukraine, which had the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union, abandoned nuclear weapons and joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a nuclear-weapon-free state.
