France Withholds Russian Ship, Criticizes Ukraine Over NATO

By Daryna Krasnolutska, Volodymyr Verbyany and Gregory Viscusi

Photographer: Facundo Arrizabalaga/Pool via Bloomberg

“We have worked out an intense plan for the next six years, so that the country meets... Read More

France ruled out delivery of a warship to Russia over the conflict in Ukraine and criticized the government in Kiev for saying it wants to join NATO.
Terms for handing over the Mistral helicopter carrier “have not been met,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France Inter radio today. While Russia’s presence in eastern Ukraine is “unacceptable,” there are “serious problems” with statements from Ukraine’s new government that it seeks NATO membership, he said.
France has a contract to sell two Mistrals to Russia. President Francois Hollande has said delivery can’t begin until a Sept. 5 cease-fire agreement is implemented between
Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in its eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The U.S. and the European Union accuse Russia of fueling the conflict, a charge Russia denies, and Ukraine says Russian troops and vehicles continue to cross the border into rebel-held areas.
Russia will send 100 trucks with more than 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid to eastern Ukraine on Nov. 28, its eighth convoy to the region, RIA Novosti reported today, citing Deputy Emergencies Minister Vladimir Stepanov.

NATO Referendum

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the former Soviet republic will decide in a referendum at the end of the decade whether to seek North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership once it completes necessary policy changes. Admission to the military alliance requires agreement by all member states, currently 28.
“We have worked out an intense plan for the next six years, so that the country meets the criteria to join the EU and to join NATO,” Poroshenko said in Kiev yesterday. “And only then the Ukrainian people will decide on joining or not joining, in a referendum.”
Ukraine’s government said Sept. 26 that it seeks NATO membership in the “short term.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticized the U.S. and EU countries for encroaching into former communist Europe, saying they have violated agreements signed at the end of the Cold War and pose a threat to his country’s national security.
One soldier was killed and five wounded in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev today. No clashes were reported on the Ukraine-Russia border, he said, though Russian troops are moving across the border into and out of rebel areas and continuing drone reconnaissance of the conflict zone.

‘Extremely Tense’

Two people died and eight were injured when a shell hit a bus in Donetsk today, the city council said on its website. Three died and eight were wounded in attacks yesterday and the situation in the city is “extremely tense” after a night of heavy shelling, it said.
Pro-Russian insurgents attacked 17 locations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions overnight using mortars, multiple rocket launch systems and shells, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council said in a statement on Facebook. Government forces fired artillery rounds to protect their positions and civilians, and troops near the key port city of Mariupol have “all means to repel the aggressor,” it said.
More than 4,300 people have been killed during the nearly eight-month conflict and much of the local infrastructure has been laid to waste in rebel-held areas of Ukraine.

Urges Pullback

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged Russia to pull back its forces from eastern Ukraine and respect the wobbly truce, which has been breached repeatedly since it was signed in Minsk, Belarus. He also said that the alliance would stick by a 2008 decision to let Ukraine join if it eventually meets the criteria and decides to do so, even if membership isn’t being discussed now.
“We are calling on Russia to stop violating international law and to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told lawmakers from NATO countries in The Hague yesterday.
Putin defended Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March and its sympathy for the separatist cause in eastern Ukraine in an interview with Russia’s Tass news agency.
People in Luhansk “perceive themselves as parts of the greater Russian world,” Putin said. “As soon as we rise, some other nations immediately feel the urge to push Russia aside, to put it ‘where it belongs,’ to slow it down.”