Gaze fixed on Nato like Northern Star

President Petro Poroshenko said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s membership in Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisatio) remains a “strategic goal” even though the Western military alliance remains sceptical about enlisting the former Soviet state.

The pro-Western leader’s comments are sure to irritate Russia at a time when the neighbours’ relations are already boiling over Moscow’s allegations that Kiev tried to seize back the Kremlin-annexed Crimea peninsula in August. Mr Poroshenko told lawmakers at the start of Ukraine’s new parliament session that Kiev had already achieved “an unprecedented and very close level of cooperation with Alliance member states.”

“Our strategic goal is Nato membership,” he said. “I would like to stress that this is an unwavering course — like the Northern Star in the sky.”

Mr Poroshenko has also set his sights set on applying for European Union membership by 2020 since taking over from ousted Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych in the wake Ukraine’s February 2014 pro-EU revolt.

Some Nato member states have expressed concern that Ukraine’s accession would only further infuriate Moscow.

The Russian President denies backing the 28-month pro-Moscow insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has claimed nearly 10,000 lives. But he admits that his soldiers swarmed the strategic Black Sea peninsula before Crimea’s formal annexation in March 2014 followed a local referendum that the UN General Assembly nearly unanimously called “illegal”.