Russian President Medvedev: Ukraine’s accession to NATO would mean war

(Reuters) – Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Ukraine’s accession to NATO would be tantamount to a declaration of war on Moscow and that only “prudence” on the part of the alliance could prevent the planet from shattering into pieces.

NATO heads of state and government pledged at their summit last week to support Ukraine on its “irreversible path towards full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership,” but left open when that membership might happen.

Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and a leading voice among the Kremlin’s hawks, told the news portal Argumenty I Fakty that Ukraine’s membership would go beyond a direct threat to Moscow’s security.

“This would essentially be a declaration of war – albeit delayed,” he said in a statement released on Wednesday.

“The measures that Russia’s opponents have been taking against us for years, the expansion of the alliance … are bringing NATO to a point of no return.”

Medvedev, in a Kremlin statement that has become common since Moscow’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said Russia does not threaten NATO but will respond to the alliance’s attempts to advance its interests.

“The more such attempts there are, the tougher our responses will be,” Medvedev said. “Whether this will tear the entire planet to pieces depends solely on the prudence of the (NATO) side.”

Medvedev, who was seen as a pro-Western modernizer during his presidency from 2008 to 2012, has reinvented himself as a hawk, warning the United States and its allies that their rearmament of Kyiv could lead to a “nuclear apocalypse.”

Medvedev also reiterated Moscow’s line that the appointment of Mark Rutte as NATO chief would not change the alliance’s position.

“Nothing will change for Russia, since important decisions are made not by NATO member states, but by one state – the United States,” Medvedev said.

NATO was founded after World War II as a defensive bulwark against a feared Soviet invasion of Western Europe. However, the subsequent admission of Eastern European countries into NATO was viewed by the Kremlin as an act of aggression.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Stephen Coates)