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Dragging Ukraine into NATO negative for European security - Lavrov ― RT News

The seeds of the ongoing turmoil in Ukraine were sown back in April 2008, when NATO suggested that Ukraine and Georgia should move closer to the alliance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

“The seeds for the current crisis were sown in 2008 in April during the NATO summit in Bucharest, when NATO leaders stated in a declaration that Georgia and Ukraine would be in NATO,” the senior Russian diplomat told Bloomberg in an interview.

He said that the Georgian president at the time, Mikhail Saakasvhili, thought the statement gave him a license to resolve the problem of Georgia’s breakaway region, South Ossetia, by force and he launched an invasion.

“He was certainly motivated by this NATO promise,” Lavrov stressed.