U.S. President Donald Trump has ruled out the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, the alliance’s Secretary General Mark Rutte indicated.
In an interview with the Bloomberg news agency on Friday, Rutte confirmed that Ukraine becoming a member of NATO has been taken off the negotiating table in talks to find a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow.
Rutte also said that relations with the Kremlin – including the potential for future energy deals – would likely be normalized in the long term after an end to the war, as “Russia is there, Russia will not go away.”
Rutte said: “It’s normal if the war would have stopped for Europe somehow, step by step, and also for the U.S., step by step, to restore normal relations with Russia.
“But we are absolutely not there yet, we have to maintain the pressure on them,” the NATO Secretary General added.
