MOSCOW. Feb 2 (Interfax) - The announced plans to hold a referendum on Ukraine's NATO membership mean that Kyiv is eager to at least somehow move towards the West, Federation Council International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachyov said.
"The idea announced by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, of holding a referendum on joining NATO, shows that today Kyiv desperately needs at least some signs of it heading towards the West," Kosachyov told Interfax on Thursday.
"It never got the lethal weapons. Cash just barely trickles in, on the requirement of genuine results in combating corruption and reforms, of which there have been extremely few. [Kyiv] is waiting apprehensively for Trump's decisions on sanctions, the European Union is increasingly split on the same issue, and in 2017 nothing bodes well in this respect," the senator said.
The subject of the "ill-fated visa-free issue" with the EU, which was to become a symbol of a "breakthrough into Europe," has instead turned into an outright irritant, especially against the backdrop of today's voting in the European Parliament in favor of scrapping visas with Georgia," he said.
In this situation, "throwing in the issue of a referendum on NATO membership aims to create an illusion that someone out there is really waiting for Ukraine," Kosachyov said.
Earlier Poroshenko said in an interview with the German newspaper Funke Mediengruppe about plans to hold a referendum on Ukraine's accession to NATO.