Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that Russia and Ukraine are parting completely and irrevocably.
"By fixing in the constitution, the obligatory course towards joining NATO and the European Union, we are sending a message to Moscow: we are parting completely and irrevocably," the UNIAN news agency cited Poroshenko as saying. "Russia, being an aggressor state, does not have and will not have a veto on our accession to either NATO or the European Union."
He stressed that this is the sovereign right of Ukraine as a country, "which confidently walks its own path."
Poroshenko was speaking before lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill in its first reading to alter Ukraine’s constitution to include as the country’s strategic goal membership in the EU and NATO.
