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Russia warns Ukraine's NATO bid would worsen Donbass
Summary
A look back at the exchange between Kyiv and Moscow over alliance membership, as Russian forces massed near Ukraine's borders.
What did Moscow say when Kyiv pressed NATO to move faster on membership? On 7 April 2021, Russia warned that having Ukraine join NATO would exacerbate the conflict in Donbass.
The warning followed a request made a day earlier, on 6 April 2021. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on NATO to hasten his country's accession to the military alliance. He framed the appeal as a response to a growing build-up of Russian troops and military hardware on Ukraine's borders.
Zelenskiy also said that closer ties with the alliance could help bring an end to the ongoing conflict in the Donbas with pro-Russian separatists. Russia's reply on 7 April took the opposite view: that Ukrainian membership would make that same conflict worse.
The two statements set out the positions on each side. Kyiv presented accession as a route to security and a way of ending the fighting. Moscow presented it as a factor that would intensify the conflict.
