The plan seeking to break the deadlock in the conflict will be different from previous similar initiatives, the paper has reported
Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson should be treated by psychiatrists over his call to accept Ukraine into NATO, ex-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said.
“This retired fool better be accepted… to a mental hospital,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram in response to Johnson’s proposal.
“There – among his counterparts – he’ll be able to pose as a tough guy demanding to launch World War III,” said Medvedev, who now serves as deputy head of Russia’s Security Council.
In his opinion piece for the Daily Mail on Friday, Johnson criticized NATO, which said during its summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius earlier this week that it would only “be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”
The new promise was “no firmer or more convincing” than the pledge that Ukraine would become a NATO member that the bloc made during the Bucharest summit in 2008, he insisted.
“When allies agree? When conditions are met? According to the Bucharest conclusions, the allies agreed all this 15 years ago,” the former UK leader wrote.
“No country is in greater need of NATO membership” than Ukraine, which is currently in a conflict with Russia, Johnson said. “All the Alliance needed to do was to set out a timetable — not for instant membership; that makes no sense as long as the war is live — but for membership as soon as victory is won,” he stated.
READ MORE: US considered withdrawing NATO ‘invitation’ to Ukraine – WaPo
Johnson, who resigned as prime minister last September after a series of scandals in his cabinet, had been among the staunchest backers of Kiev and had insisted on a military solution to the conflict with Moscow. Some reports suggest that he was instrumental in derailing the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine last March.
Moscow, which views NATO as a hostile bloc and vigorously opposes its eastward expansion, highlighted Kiev’s aspirations of joining the US-led military alliance as among the main reasons for launching its military operation against Ukraine in February 2022.
