Ukraine Renounces 'Non-Aligned' Status to Join NATO

In a bid to join the NATO defence alliance in future, Ukraine lawmakers voted Tuesday to drop the country's "non-aligned" status.

Ukraine has been hardening its stance towards Russia, which sees the Western alliance's eastward expansion as a threat to its own security.

Pressurized by Russia, Ukraine adopted the non-aligned status in 2010. Adoption of the status prevented it from joining any military alliance.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Ukraine's renunciation of its neutral military and political status is a "counterproductive" step that would only lead to more tensions around the crisis-hit region in the east.

"This is counterproductive and only escalates confrontations and creates an illusion that by adopting such laws it might be possible to settle a profound domestic crisis in Ukraine," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported.

"It will only escalate the confrontation and creates the illusion that it is possible to resolve Ukraine's deep internal crisis by passing such laws," TASS news agency quoted Lavrov as saying, Reuters reports.

Ukraine's decision comes at a time when Russia is struggling from declining rouble value and economic instability.

Even though the vote did not have an immediate effect on Ukraine's relationship with NATO, it at least ended the country's non-aligned status.

The proposal to drop the non-aligned status passed with 303 of Ukrainian Parliament's 450 lawmakers supporting the move.

"Finally, we corrected a mistake. 303 votes and Ukraine's nonaligned status is out," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Facebook Tuesday, The Washington Post reports. "There is no alternative to Euro-Atlantic integration. Glory to Ukraine!"