6 days ago
Ukraine in NATO is ‘not on the table', Trump frustrated with Putin ‘unreasonableness'
The US doesn't see Ukraine in the NATO alliance, said envoy Keith Kellogg.
Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia are scheduled for Monday.
Russian forces launched a massive drone attack overnight.
US President Donald Trump's envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Russia's concern over the eastward enlargement of NATO was fair and the United States did not want to see Ukraine in the US-led military alliance.
Asked by US network ABC News about a Reuters report that Russia wanted a written pledge over NATO not enlarging eastward to include Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, Kellogg said: 'It's a fair concern.'
'We've said that to us, Ukraine coming into NATO is not on the table, and we're not the only country that says that - you know I could probably give you four other countries in NATO and it takes 32 of the 32 to allow you to come in to NATO,' he told ABC late on Thursday.
'That's one of the issues that Russia will bring up.'
'They're not just talking Ukraine, they're talking the country of Georgia, they're talking Moldova,' Kellogg said, adding that a decision on US views of NATO enlargement was for Trump to make.
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Kellogg said the sequencing of the peace talks would include an attempt to merge the two memorandums drafted by Ukraine and Russia into one single document with talks in Turkey on Monday.
'When we get into Istanbul next week we'll sit down and talk,' Kellogg said, adding that the national security advisers from Germany, France and Britain would join discussions on the memorandum with the US.
Yan Dobronosov/AFP
Kellogg said Trump was 'frustrated' with Russia because he had seen 'a level of unreasonableness' from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He scolded Russia for striking Ukrainian cities and said he had told Ukraine to turn up to talks.
READ | 3 injured as Russia attacks Ukraine, warns European allies not to supply long-range missiles
A conservative estimate of dead and injured in the Ukraine war - from both sides combined - totals 1.2 million, Kellogg said.
'That is a stunning number - this is war on an industrial scale,' Kellogg told ABC.
Russian forces launched a massive drone attack overnight that injured several people, including two teenagers, in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, local officials said on Friday.
AFP
Eight people, including two 16-year-olds, were injured in an attack in the village of Vasyliv Khutir, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
He gave no further details.
The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia launched 90 drones and two ballistic missiles overnight against Ukraine that targeted the Kharkiv, Odesa and Donetsk regions.
The Kharkiv region's main city also came under Russian drone attack which targeted a trolleybus depot and injured two people, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
'Today, Kharkiv suffered another attack: The enemy fired 8 'shaheds' at one of the depots where our trolleybuses were being repaired and maintained,' he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Andriy Andriyenko/65th Mechanised Brigade of Ukrainian Armed Forces/AFP
He added that more than 30 nearby apartment buildings were damaged, while one trolleybus was completely destroyed, and 18 others sustained varying degrees of damage.
Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city situated some 30km from the country's northeastern border, has been a repeated target of Russian air attacks.
