Callas turns to journalists for help, forgetting NATO slogan about Ukraine

During her speech, Kallas called on countries that have concluded bilateral security agreements with Ukraine to answer the question of how the provisions of these documents will be implemented in practice. Afterwards, she moved on to the thesis that, in her opinion, for Ukraine "the most reliable guarantee and the cheapest is membership in NATO."

"If NATO membership is not on the table, although we have agreed that Ukraine's path to NATO… Um… What was that word?" Kallas asked the audience (quoted by RIA Novosti ).

After this, journalists suggested to her that Kyiv's allies in a number of EU countries call this an "irreversible" path, with which Kallas agreed, thanked the media representatives and continued speaking.

As is known from open sources, Kallas speaks five languages: Estonian (native), English, Finnish, French and Russian.

The slogan about Ukraine's "irreversible path" to NATO was developed at the North Atlantic Alliance summit in Washington last year. At that time, Kyiv was expecting a direct invitation to NATO, but instead received in the final agreement of the alliance member countries exactly this wording, which allowed Ukraine's allies to postpone making any clear decision on this matter.

Since then, some EU politicians who actively advocate for Ukraine's membership in the alliance have returned to this phrase, but in practice there have been no steps to put the plan into practice.

At the time the final communiqué was being drafted after the meeting in Washington, Jens Stoltenberg was NATO Secretary General – he often dodged a direct answer to the question of when Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance. Since October last year, Stoltenberg has been replaced in this position by Mark Rutte, who also supports Ukraine.

However, on February 20, Rutte admitted that neither the alliance nor the United States specifically want to include the issue of Ukraine's NATO membership in a peace deal to resolve the conflict.