Volodymyr Fesenko: Putin prepares trap for West

The Kremlin's latest conditions of peace in exchange for guarantees that Ukraine won't join NATO are an attempt to hook the West.

Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of the Centre for Applied Political Studies Penta,said it to an Ukrinform journalist.

“The Russian Federation will try to persuade certain European countries and certain European politicians that Ukraine should not join NATO. It is supposed to guarantee the solution to the Ukrainian crisis. You say that Ukraine won't become a NATO member and everything becomes fine. It is a hook for the West,” he noted.

According to the expert, such concessions cannot guarantee the end of the war. On the contrary, they can give the Russian aggressor a free hand: “New ultimatums may follow. They say today that Ukraine cannot join NATO, but they can say tomorrow they are against Ukraine's membership in the European Union.”

Fesenko recalled the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008: “Russia offered the same conditions (in relation to Ukraine and Georgia) and the West, in particular, Germany and France agreed on a compromise. But what happened next is that Russia launched a war against Ukraine in the same year.”

“It is very important to understand that such proposals from Russia are a trap. Countries should not agree to such variants,” Fesenko thinks.

He is convinced that it is up for Ukraine to decide whether it should join the North Atlantic Alliance or not: “It is a matter of principle for us to have our sovereign right to self-determination, to take decisions on our future. No one should impose external restrictions on us.”