- December 7, 2014
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Russia is interfering in the internal affairs of post-Soviet countries, seeking to integrate with the European Union, calling in the first place Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.
“Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine – three countries in our Eastern neighborhood, took a sovereign decision to sign an association agreement with the EU”, – said Merkel in an interview with Welt.
“Russia poses challenges to all these three countries,” – Merkel continued, pointing to the smoldering conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia war and in the Donbass, in inflating which Ukraine and Western countries accuse Russia.
Moscow denies involvement Russian troops in the conflict in eastern Ukraine on the side of the separatists.
Merkel said she still thinks is right, that in 2008 was not started the process of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. This decision was made with the active participation of Germany at the NATO summit in Bucharest in that year.
However, the German Chancellor stressed that NATO will fulfill its obligation to protect against external aggression from those Eastern European countries that have already joined NATO in particularly Poland and the Baltic states.
“There is no reason to talk about the war in the Baltic. But regardless of this, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all, remains in force” – Merkel said.
Russian officials have consistently expressed categorical rejection of NATO’s eastward expansion.
As said in November in an interview with BBC BBC spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov ” We would like to get an absolute guarantee that no one will think of Ukraine’s accession to NATO. We would like to hear that NATO would no longer be closer to our borders, that NATO stops trying to upset the balance of forces “.
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