[tomm]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is alarmed by President Petro Poroshenko’s plan to hold a referendum on Ukraine joining NATO, seeing it as a dead end that would only inflame tensions with Russia.

Ukrainian membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not on the table for Merkel, according to one German official, who said that a referendum wouldn’t bring Ukraine closer to NATO since decisions on membership are made by Alliance countries and not voters. Any bid to join NATO can only end badly, a second official said. Both asked not to be named discussing German government strategy.

It’s a stance that Merkel and Vladimir Putin can agree on, even as she vents frustration at her inability to sway the Russian president to resolve the crisis.
German resistance to Ukraine’s membership in the 28-nation military alliance, echoed by France, is a warning to Poroshenko not to aggravate the conflict with pro-Kremlin separatists that has claimed more than 4,300 lives in almost eight months.
“In recent days there have been a number of statements from the Ukraine side that have not helped,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on France Inter radio yesterday.
ermany is concerned that the new government isn’t going far enough in tackling corruption, the second official said. Suggestions in Kiev that welfare or pension payments to regions under the control of separatists could be cut off would result in a quagmire and offer a golden opportunity to Russia to intervene, the official said.

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