BBC News – Ukraine votes to drop non-aligned status

December 24, 2014 (BBC News) Ukraine’s parliament has voted to drop the country’s non-aligned status and work towards Nato membership. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the move “counterproductive” and said it would boost tensions. The BBC’s David Stern in Kiev says it is not clear when Ukraine will apply for Nato membership and many officials see it as a distant prospect. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pledged to seek Nato membership over Russian support for rebels in the east. Russia, which annexed the Crimean peninsula in March, denies supplying the rebels with weapons. However, it is subject to EU and US sanctions over the crisis. In a vote in Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday, MPs overwhelmingly backed the move by 303 to 8. Speaking before the vote, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Ukraine was determined to pivot towards Europe and the West. “This will lead to integration in the European and the Euro-Atlantic space,” he said. The non-aligned status, which Ukraine adopted in 2010 under Russian pressure, prevents states from joining military alliances.

On Ukrainian Army Day (December 6) Ukrainian army got more armored vehicles than in the past 10 years

An armored vehicles transfer ceremony have taken place in Chuguyiv near Kharkiv on December 6, 2014. Modernized and repaired tanks T-64B (Bulat) and armored troop carriers are among military equipment to be sent soon to the warfare area. Besides self-propelled howitzers 2S1 “Gvozdika” and helicopters Mi-8 and Mi-2 will be delivered to the east of Ukraine soon. Ukraine has partly suspended the supplies of military equipment abroad to meet growing requirements of Ukrainian Army.

The annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war with Russian Federation have changed the Ukrainian government’s attitude toward the domestic military industry. Consequently, Ukraine’s arms production sector is likely to cease being an export-oriented industry that depended on Russia and exploited the fame of the Soviet military-industrial complex, while not developing much of its own hardware or technologies. President Petro Poroshenko told the government last September that the Ukrainian military-industrial complex could become one of the engines of the national economy. 

We have to thank you all Ukrainian engineers and workers for their selfless labour. They succeeded in breathing new life into military factories and specialized repair shops that have been standing idle for decades. To say truly, these vehicles are out of the date in comparison with what NATO countries are currently armed with, but undoubtedly it is better than nothing. Unfortunately the countries that acts as guarantors of our territorial integrity as well as other western friends of Ukraine more inclined to provide us with whatever you want but not lethal arms. More and more people here in Ukraine has started to think about whether the decision regarding a non-nuclear -weapon status was mistaken or not ...