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Zelenskiy asks NATO to speed up Ukraine's accession
Summary
A look back at the appeal made as Russian forces massed near Ukraine's borders and the Donbas conflict continued.
What did Kyiv ask of its allies on 6 April 2021? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on NATO to hasten the country's accession to the military alliance, citing a growing build-up of Russian troops and military hardware on Ukraine's borders.
He also asked the alliance to help bring an end to the ongoing conflict in the Donbas with pro-Russian separatists.
The backdrop
The appeal came days after Russian President Vladimir Putin, on 31 March 2021, accused Ukraine of "provoking armed confrontation" with pro-Russian separatists in the war-torn east. Putin also said Ukraine had failed to comply with the July 2020 ceasefire.
The conflict, which began in 2014, had by then killed more than 14,000 people.
The two statements, a week apart, set out sharply different accounts of the situation in the east, with Kyiv pointing to Russian military concentrations near its borders and Moscow blaming Ukraine for the confrontation.
