Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine

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.