"Thirty NATO members must decide when Ukraine will be able to join NATO, no one else has the right to interfere in this process," RIA Novosti quoted Stoltenberg during a joint press conference in Brussels with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba.
He noted that a sovereign state has the right to apply for membership in the alliance.
“Major powers cannot dictate to others what to do.
This is the world that we want to leave in the past, ”said Stoltenberg.
According to him, Russia cannot "decide for other states in the security sphere, this also applies to NATO membership."
Earlier, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy recognized joining NATO as the only way for Ukraine to end the armed conflict in Donbass.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “a hypothetical membership in the alliance, contrary to Kiev's expectations, not only will not bring peace to Ukraine, but, on the contrary, will lead to a large-scale escalation of the situation in the southeast and may lead to irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood. ".