Ukraine parliament vote to end nonaligned status is step toward NATO

KIEV, Ukraine – The Ukrainian parliament voted Tuesday to end the nation’s nonaligned status in the face of Russian aggression, angering Moscow and potentially opening the way to NATO membership in years to come.

The nonaligned policy, a vestige of the nation’s closer relations to Russia under now-deposed President Viktor Yanukovich, was the principal factor in allowing Moscow to seize the Crimea peninsula last winter and to abet the subsequent rebellion in eastern Ukraine, said lawmaker Yuri Bereza.

“If Ukraine had moved to join NATO right after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia would have never dared to deploy its troops in Crimea, annex the peninsula and then incite, supply troops and hardware for an armed mutiny in Donbass,” Bereza said in an interview after 303 members of the 450-seat parliament voted to support the move.

“Now it is up to us to conduct necessary military and political reforms to join the (North Atlantic) alliance,” he said.

Bereza, who formerly led a militia battalion in the fight against pro-Russia insurgents in the east, expressed hope that Ukraine might join NATO in three years, although Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko previously said his nation would not be in shape to join the alliance before 2020.

“That will be our iron-clad guarantee against a new Russian aggression,” said Bereza.

The armed conflict in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 4,700 lives and caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. Large areas in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, including both capitals, remain under control of the separatists.

The vote Tuesday demonstrated Ukraine’s “choice in favor of freedom and security,” Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin said at news conference in Kiev.

“Today we are working with our allies and NATO secretariat to establish a new annual national program which will fulfill these reforms,” Klimkin said.

His Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, condemned the decision.

“It is counterproductive as it only enhances the confrontation by creating an illusion that the adoption of such laws can resolve the deep internal state crisis in Ukraine,” Lavrov said in a statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

The parliament’s decision came on the eve of talks in neighboring Belarus between the Ukrainian government and the separatists.