Ukraine moves away from nonaligned status

Supporters of the move, which passed by a 303-9 vote, said it was justified by Russian aggression toward Ukraine.

|
Alex Kuzmin/REUTERS
Parliamentary deputies applaud after a renouncing of Ukraine's "non-aligned" status during a session of a parliament in Kiev, December 23, 2014. The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday renounced Ukraine's "non-aligned" status with the aim of eventually joining NATO, angering Moscow which views the Western alliance's eastward expansion as a threat to its own security.

Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday voted to abandon the country's nonaligned status, a move that could be a step toward seeking membership in NATO.

Supporters of the move, which passed by a 303-9 vote, said it was justified by Russian aggression toward Ukraine, including the annexation of its Crimean Peninsula in March and Russian support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where some 4,700 people have been killed since the spring.

But opponents said it will only increase tensions, and Moscow echoed that view.

"This is counterproductive, it only heats up the confrontation, creating the illusion that accepting such a law is the road to regulating the deep internal crisis in Ukraine," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Russia routinely characterizes the Ukrainian crisis as an internal matter and rejects claims from Ukraine and the West that it has sent troops and equipment to eastern Ukraine and shelled the region from Russian border areas.

Although Ukraine had pursued NATO membership several years ago, it declared itself a non-bloc country after Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010. Yanukovych fled the country in February after months of street protests that exploded into violence, and was replaced by Western-leaning Petro Poroshenko in May.

Russia's annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and its support for the separatist insurgency appear partly rooted in fears that the Western military alliance could expand its presence on the Russian border. Current NATO members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland all border Russia

The vote does not mean that Ukraine will apply to join NATO. But "in the conditions of the current aggression against Ukraine, this law opens for us new mechanisms," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told the parliament.

However, Ukraine's prospects for NATO membership in the near term appear dim. With its long-underfunded military suffering from the war with the separatists and the country's economy in peril, Ukraine has much to overcome to achieve the stability that the alliance seeks in members.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Ukraine moves away from nonaligned status
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1223/Ukraine-moves-away-from-nonaligned-status
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe