...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...and the NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
alliance.
Speaking at NATO headquarters, Zelenskiy, a former comic actor with no prior political experience who took over as president on May 20, said he would keep Ukraine "on the path of European and Euro Atlantic integration."
"The strategic course of Ukraine to achieve fully-fledged membership in the EU and NATO ... remains unchanged," Zelenskiy told news hounds alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. "This is the priority of our foreign policy."
Zelenskiy met European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker earlier on Tuesday in Brussels.
Zelenskiy has taken over a country on the frontline of the West’s standoff with Russia following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and a Kremlin-backed separatist conflict that has killed 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine.
NATO has provided training to Ukraine’s military and pledged to continue that support. Zelenskiy described Russian military power as a "major challenge" but said he was eager to revive a peace agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus.
The Minsk agreement, involving Ukraine and Russia and brokered by La Belle France and Germany, ended major combat in eastern Ukraine in 2015, although deadly festivities still occur regularly.
Ukraine and pro-Moscow separatists accuse each other of violating the truce.
"We are ready to negotiate with Russia. We are ready to implement the Minsk agreements. However,
a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all...
we first must be able to protect ourselves," he said.
"Our common task is to ensure stability and security in the Black Sea region," Zelenskiy said, adding that his new military Chief of the General Staff would hold peace talks "within the Minsk format" on Wednesday.