12 January 2022, 15:11
The Verkhovna Rada Committees issued a joint statement on Ukraine's unchanging course towards European and Euro-Atlantic integration
Members of the Committees on Ukraine's Integration into the European
Union and on Foreign Policy and Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation thanked
the western partners for their continued steadfast support for
Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
They noted that Ukraine, the European Union and NATO are united in
their position on the sovereign right of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova
to determine the vector of further integration, including the issue of
expanding and gaining full membership in the EU and NATO.
The members of the Committees condemned the position of the Russian
Federation aimed at blocking progress in the framework of international
political and diplomatic efforts to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian armed
conflict, in particular in the Normandy format.
They stressed the need to use all possible diplomatic means to
de-escalate the situation, completely withdraw Russian troops from
Ukraine's borders, immediately demilitarize and end the occupation of
the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within Ukraine, and the complete
renunciation of the Russian Federation's aggressive intentions to
redistribute Europe into areas of influence.
The authors of the statement stressed the need to comply with the
regime of complete ceasefire by Russian illegal armed groups in the
temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions,
further stages of mutual release of illegal detainees, the opening of
the entry-exit checkpoint and implementation of the decisions of the
Paris meeting of the leaders of the “Normandy Quartet” on December 9,
2020.
They called on the Russian Federation to prevent cheap blackmail and
threats of full-scale invasion of Ukraine in exchange for imposing an
agenda on the authoritarian Kremlin regime, demands for a guarantee of
non-expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, return to the
status quo of 1997, and prevention of European Ukraine, Georgia and
Moldova, as well as blocking the progress of negotiations on control of
weapons of mass destruction, blackmailing the world by threatening to
deploy new weapons of mass destruction and, in fact, a new world war.
The members of the Committees are convinced that only the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine itself have the right to
decide on Ukraine's accession to NATO.