Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj sees his country on the way to NATO despite the Russian war of aggression. In view of new military aid from the West and international support, Ukraine has had a good week for its "movement towards NATO," Zelenskyj said in a video message distributed in Kiev on Saturday evening. This week, EU member Lithuania acknowledged the need to invite Ukraine to become a member of the defence alliance at the NATO summit in the capital Vilnius in July.

According to the Kremlin, Zelenskyi's aspiration to NATO is one reason for Russia's war of aggression. After the invasion, Zelenskyj applied for accelerated accession of his country to NATO in autumn 2022. He relies on preferential treatment. The German government and the United States had expressed restraint on this. In general, a prerequisite for NATO accession is that the candidate country must not be involved in international conflicts and disputes over borders. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Lithuania decided this week to seek an official invitation to Ukraine to join the Western military alliance as host of the next NATO summit on 11 and 12 July. Zelenskyj thanked the Baltic country for its support. In his video message, he particularly praised the military aid of NATO members Germany, Poland and the USA, among others, which supply weapons and ammunition.

Zelenskyj once again appealed for support from countries that, unlike the West, have not yet clearly distanced themselves from Russia. In Ukraine today, people are fighting for universal values that are close to all peoples. "Everyone appreciates security and protection from terror," Zelensky said. No people wants what the occupiers stand for: "Russian concentration camps, the deportation of children, the rape of women and the pillaging of cities." The more the world learns about it, the faster the aggressor Russia loses. Then peace returns.

"Secret data" in US media a Russian fake?

Meanwhile, alleged US secret documents on the war continued to cause a stir. Kiev also considers the new material that appeared on the Internet to be Russian forgeries and part of Moscow's disinformation campaign in the wake of the war in Ukraine. "It's an ordinary intelligence game," presidential office adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said on Twitter and Telegram on Saturday. The Russian secret services had prepared the documents themselves with the aim of sowing doubt and discord among Ukraine's allies and distracting from the next stages of the war.

American media such as the "New York Times" had reported on Friday about other documents with US military secrets that appeared on the Internet, including Ukraine, China and the Middle East. The more than 100 documents, which had been published on Twitter, among other things, contained information about Ukraine's air defense capabilities, it said. The Pentagon and the foreign intelligence service CIA investigated, therefore, the matter.

Podoljak explained that the material was a collection of data from publicly available sources, mixed with inventions and intercepted information. All this was then stamped with the stamp of a leak of secret data, published on the Internet and en masse on social networks in the hope of creating a certain credibility.

Podoljak had also described the first similar publications on Friday as a forgery – and as an attempt by the Russians to disrupt Ukraine's planned spring offensive. The counterfeits were also badly made, said Podoljak. The initiators specifically focused on journalists and media who did not realize that they were part of a game of others.