Western countries can no longer afford to integrate Ukraine into NATO, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview with Tucker Carlson, Ednews reports citing TASS.
In the interview, the Hungarian premier told the former Fox News host that there was a real chance to integrate Ukraine into the North Atlantic Alliance at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. But "there was no agreement among the big Western countries to do so," so the idea was rejected, Orban said. "We missed the historical opportunity to do so (to integrate the Ukrainians into NATO - TASS). And this window of opportunity is not open any more, so we can’t do that. So, we can’t afford to have that long borderline between Russia and Ukraine which belongs to NATO - that would mean immediate war danger to all of us, even in Washington," Orban warned.
According to the Hungarian premier, the North Atlantic Alliance should "forget about" Ukraine’s integration into NATO and agree on a new security architecture with Moscow. "We should make a deal with the Russians on the new security architecture to provide security and sovereignty for Ukraine, but not membership in NATO," Orban maintained.
