In his words, the Russian Federation attacked Georgia and Ukraine after France and Germany had blocked the participation of these countries in the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). Their decision to do that came about in Bucharest thirteen years ago.
“Our international partners are blaming us for being not efficient enough in dealing with corruption. As a matter of fact, corruption exists in other countries as well. For instance, in 2008, the French acted as a mediator at talks between Georgia and Russia. And as a result, the Georgians lost part of their territory, while the French got an order from Russia for the construction of a helicopter carrier ship Mistral,” said Danylov at a press conference recently.
He added, “When we meet in private with German and French representatives here in Kyiv, I remind them about that.” Danylov believes that these countries are more interested in having close cooperation with the Russian Federation. In fact, they are political and economic partners of Russia, he insists.
In the opinion of Danylov, Great Britain that has pledged to build ships for the Ukrainian Navy is the major strategic partner of Ukraine. When asked what other countries he regards as partners of Ukraine, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council named the United States and the Baltic nations.
While in Lithuania with an official visit, on July 6, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the Lithuanian Republic Gitanas Nauseda.
Zelenskyy expressed his gratitude to the Republic of Lithuania and the leaders of the European Union for their clear and firm position that the resuming of a high-level dialog between the European Union and the Russian Federation is unacceptable because of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine.
This June, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron suggested an idea to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to a summit of the EU leaders, regardless of the fact that this country is under international sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of the Crimean peninsula.
However, the neighbours of Ukraine and a number of other EU member-nations rejected the proposal of France and Germany. In response, Angela Merkel said that she felt sorry about that but the work nevertheless has to go on.
As is known, the Chancellor of Germany speaks in favour of the completion of the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream-2 bypassing Ukraine regardless of numerous critics of the project. They argue that the new pipeline will become one more tool of political pressure of Russia on the West making the latter energy dependent on Moscow.
The newspaper Voice of Ukraine
