'Ukraine with NATO, Russia would get a neighbour from unfriendly bloc that plans to make nuclear weapons': Medvedev

Moscow: Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said that there are situations where agreements are counterproductive and one needs to take actions like launching a special military operation. In an interview with Russian media outlets and users of the VKontakte social media network, he said “In my view, it makes no sense to negotiate in certain situations. One must ignore it, and in some cases make decisions like the one that was made on February 24 last year because agreements can be counterproductive in certain cases,” He was responding to a question when asked if Moscow needed to make agreements with the countries that failed to see Kyiv’s crimes. Medvedev said that Moscow tried for decades to convey some simple things to the West. “The Soviet Union collapsed. Yes, it’s sad but that is what happened, both because of the Soviet leadership’s incompetent policy and your external interference. The country fell apart but ties did not, and the people remained the same. How do you imagine that? Ukraine becoming part of NATO?” he was quoted by the Russian news agency TASS as saying. Meanwhile, Ukraine “had its own nuclear weapons complex,”. As a result, Russia would get a neighbour “who is not only a member of an unfriendly bloc but also plans to produce nuclear weapons,” Medvedev said. The Russian leader also pointed out that Ukraine’s leader spoke about this shortly before the start of the operation, in late 2021. So do you want us to put up with it, he asked. “We consider Crimea part of our land but Ukraine regards it as their territory. In this situation where we have a dispute over Crimea and imagine them joining NATO and launching a large-scale operation against our country under NATO’s umbrella - we cannot accept this,” Medvedev said. Russia had proposed a draft agreement on security guarantees to Western countries and they responded by saying ‘no’ to it," Medvedev was quoted by TASS as saying, adding that the current ramifications are much more complicated than they would have been" had the document been signed last December.

The Russian and Ukrainian forces have been largely in a stalemate, trading small slices of land over the winter. The worst battles have been reported in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russia is struggling to encircle the Bakhmut city in the face of tenacious Ukrainian defence.

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