Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday backed Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Org.sation, saying the war-torn country deserves to be part of the alliance. Erdogan made the remarks at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky is on a European tour to support Ukraine becoming part of the military alliance. NATO leaders will meet next week in Vilnius, Lithu.a, where they are expected to show support for Ukraine’s inclusion in the alliance.
Final approval for Sweden to join military alliance
“There is no doubt that Ukraine deserves NATO membership,” Erdogan told reporters. Turkey has expressed support for Ukraine’s NATO membership at a time when it is finalizing Sweden’s inclusion in the military alliance. They say Sweden is not acting effectively against Kurdish militants and other groups that Ankara sees as a threat to its security. Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO last year, abandoning their decades-long policy of neutrality following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia stopped the movement of ships: Zelensky
Turkey’s parliament has approved Finland’s membership. Erdogan also said he was working to expand a grain deal brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, under which Ukraine is exporting more than 30 million tons of grain through the Black Sea. The deal ends on July 17. Russia has refused to go ahead with the deal, citing constraints on its grain and fertilizer exports.
Zelensky has accused Russia of obstructing the movement of ships. “Russia is behaving as if the entire Black Sea belongs to it and it belongs to it,” he said. Erdoğan said that Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Turkey in August and it is expected that the issue will be discussed after that. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithu.a, will bring Ukraine closer to a military alliance.
What did the NATO chief say on Ukraine?
“I hope our leaders will once again reaffirm Ukraine’s NATO membership and agree on how to bring Ukraine closer to achieving its goal,” Stoltenberg told a news conference here late Friday. He said NATO aims to adopt three regional defense plans at the July 11-12 summit, Xinhua news agency reported. He said the military grouping would strengthen its deterrence in the Atlantic and European Arctic in the north, the Baltic region and Central Europe in the middle, and the Mediterranean and Black Sea in the south.
