KYIV (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday it was time for NATO to take the political decision to invite Ukraine to join the military alliance, and that Kyiv wanted to know when it would become a member.
The Ukrainian leader told a joint news conference in Kyiv with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg that a NATO summit in Vilnius in July could become “historic”, and that he had been invited to attend.
“I am grateful for the invitation to visit the summit, but it is also important for Ukraine to receive the corresponding invitation,” he told reporters.
“There is not a single objective barrier to the political decision to invite Ukraine into the alliance and now, when most people in NATO countries and the majority of Ukrainians support NATO accession, is the time for the corresponding decisions.”
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Timothy Heritage)
