The Ukraine for the day

The BBC has an article about the Ukraine:

The Ukraine's parliament has voted to drop the country's non-aligned status and work towards NATO membership. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the move "counterproductive", and said it would boost tensions.
The BBC's David Stern in Kiev says it is not clear when the Ukraine will apply for NATO membership, and many officials see it as a distant prospect.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (photo) pledged to seek NATO membership over Russian support for rebels in the east.
Russia, which annexed the Crimean peninsula in March of 2014, denies supplying the rebels with weapons. However, it is subject to sanctions over the crisis.
In a vote in the Ukraine's parliament, MPs overwhelmingly backed the move by three hundred to eight.
Speaking before the vote, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said the Ukraine was determined to pivot towards Europe and the West. "This will lead to integration in the European and the Euro-Atlantic space," he said.
Non-aligned status, which the Ukraine adopted in 2010 under Russian pressure, prevents states from joining military alliances. 

Analysis by Steve Rosenberg, BBC News, in Moscow:

For the Kremlin, the idea that the Ukraine might one day join the European Union is like a bad dream. But the thought of the Ukraine joining NATO is a nightmare. Russia has long complained about NATO "expanding" east, up to Russia's borders. The Kremlin would view the Ukraine's membership in the alliance as a direct threat to its national security. That's unlikely to happen any time soon, especially with the conflict continuing in the eastern Ukraine.
But Moscow has been quick to denounce the Ukrainian parliament for renouncing the country's non-aligned status. Today's vote in the Rada, the Ukraine's parliament, certainly drives another wedge between Kiev and Moscow. And it may complicate efforts to resolve the current crisis.
But critics of the Kremlin argue that it is Russia's direct involvement in the conflict in the eastern Ukraine which is pushing Kiev closer to NATO.

Addressing foreign ambassadors recently, President Poroshenko said the Ukraine's "fight for its independence, territorial integrity, and sovereignty has turned into a decisive factor in our relations with the world".
Russia has made clear that it opposes the Ukraine's move towards NATO. Andrei Kelin, Russia's envoy to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said recently: "It's an unfriendly step towards us. This political vector will only add to nuisances and acuteness in ties."
In a recent Facebook post, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that the Ukraine's rejection of neutrality would have "negative consequences. In essence, an application for NATO membership will turn the Ukraine into a potential military opponent for Russia," he wrote.
A NATO spokesman in Brussels, Belgium said that any accession to the alliance would probably take years, Reuters reported.
Some NATO members are also lukewarm towards accepting the Ukraine, says the BBC's David Stern in Kiev.
The roots of the current conflict go back to the Ukraine's pro-EU street protests at the end of 2013 that led to the fall of Russian-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych in February of 2014.
After the Crimea was annexed, pro-Russian separatists seized parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the eastern Ukraine, and later declared independence. Since then, nearly five thousand people have died and another million have been displaced by fighting. A ceasefire was signed by both sides in Minsk in September of 2014, but observers say some fighting is continuing.

Rico says this shit ain't gonna be over any time soon...