POLICE ringed Kiev’s parliament building and protesters argued with them yesterday as Ukraine took a big step toward Nato.

A parliamentary vote in the government-controlled chamber overwhelmingly adopted a Bill dropping Ukraine’s non-aligned status.

President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to put Ukraine under the Western military umbrella’s “protection.”

“Ukraine’s fight for its independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty has turned into a decisive factor in our relations with the world,” Mr Poroshenko claimed to foreign ambassadors in Kiev on Monday night.

Ukraine had assumed neutrality in 2010.

And Moscow had set Kiev’s exclusion from all military blocs as a condition for any deal on the pro-Russian uprising that has seen the death of 4,700 in the eastern Ukrainian industrial belt in the past eight months.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to the announcement by saying that Ukraine’s adoption of the Bill was “absolutely counter-productive.”

The measure “creates an illusion that, through this Bill, through an aspiration to drop non-aligned status and join Nato — which Ukrainian politicians openly talk about — one can settle a deep crisis of the Ukrainian state,” Mr Lavrov said.

Russia’s view of Nato as its biggest threat has been reinforced by the increasing development of a Nato ring of steel around the country.

“In essence, an application for Nato membership would turn Ukraine into a potential military opponent,” Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Monday.

He said that Ukraine’s rejection of neutrality and the new Russian sanctions law that US President Barack Obama signed on Friday “will both have very negative consequences.”

And he added: “Our country will have to respond to them.”

Perhaps the most immediate threat will be to delicate peace talks announced earlier by Mr Poroshenko which are due to take place in Minsk later this week.

Previous meetings have been hung up by Kiev’s refusal to contemplate discussions ending the suspension of social security and other benefit payments in rebel-run districts which rebels have insisted on.

Donetsk region negotiator Denis Pushilin stressed that “we are ready to meet.

“But only along the lines of the agenda that we discussed before.”