Russia said on Thursday that Ukraine's pursuit of Nato membership posed a danger to European security and threatened to sever its remaining ties to the Atlantic military alliance.
Ukraine's parliament renounced the country's neutral status on Tuesday in a significant step towards joining Nato.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said the West was using Ukraine's Nato bid to fuel confrontation between Russia and its neighbour.
"There are a few Western countries that want to maintain the crisis in Ukraine and to maintain and boost the confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, including through provocative efforts towards membership in the Atlantic alliance," he said.
"The very idea of Ukraine's efforts to join Nato are dangerous, not only for Ukrainian people, because there is no unity over that issue, it is dangerous for European security,"
A Nato official, who asked not to be named, told The Associated Press it was solely up to Kiev to decide on its foreign policy.
"Should Ukraine decide to apply for Nato membership, Nato will assess its readiness to join the alliance in the same way as with any candidate. This is an issue between Nato and the individual countries aspiring to membership," the official said.
Nato has already boosted its military presence in eastern Europe this year, saying it has evidence that Russia orchestrated and armed a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine that followed the overthrow of a Kremlin-backed president in Kiev.
Representatives from the Ukraine government and pro-Russian separatists concluded "difficult" talks on Thursday without agreeing the date of a new round aimed at ending the uprising that began in April and has so far left over 4,700 people dead.
The five-hour preliminary discussion in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, had been tentatively due to be followed by a second meeting on Friday at which a final accord was to be signed.
But rebel representatives stressed that they could not yet promise whether the negotiations would resume as planned.
"We had a difficult preliminary meeting," Denis Pushilin, the Donetsk separatist region mediator, told a pro-rebel news site. "The date and time of the next meeting is still up in the air. It is under discussion."
A truce agreed in September has been regularly flouted by both sides, but violence has lessened significantly in December.
Credit to The Telegraph
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