US Ready to Back Ukraine’s NATO Bid: Report

The U.S. may be warming up to Ukraine joining NATO soon, according to a new report, as Kyiv steps up its calls for alliance membership despite long-standing concern over a possible widening of the war.

U.S. officials “no longer have any objections in principle to a simple invitation,” French daily newspaper Le Monde reported on Saturday. “If [Vice President] Kamala Harris is elected, we could imagine [President Joe] Biden moving in this direction during the transition period,” the paper reported, citing an anonymous European diplomatic source.

Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment.

Just a few weeks out from the U.S. presidential elections, which will see Harris and former President Donald Trump go head-to-head, Kyiv has renewed pleas for gaining membership to NATO and attempted to shore up support for its war against Moscow.

NATO said back in 2008 that Ukraine would one day join the alliance, and has consistently said that Kyiv’s future lies with NATO. However, the timeline for bringing Ukraine into the alliance as never been clear, NATO keen to avoid becoming directly involved in the conflict and unsure of how Russia may respond.

“There’s a war going on. I think we have to resolve this, we have to restore Ukraine’s sovereignty over its territories, and then make sure that the path to NATO is open,” Congressman Gerry Connolly, the head of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly, told the U.S.-backed Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty outlet in an article published on Sunday. “I understand a certain haste and impatience on the part of Ukrainians.”

In later remarks, the Democrat said he believed “President Biden was—and still is—sympathetic to Ukrainian aspirations, including NATO membership.” But it isn’t possible for the U.S. president to make any “specific actions without consulting with other NATO allies,” Connolly said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky lists NATO membership as the first of his criteria to achieve what he has termed his “victory plan,” presented to Ukraine’s backers in recent weeks.

“It would be politically wrong to leave Ukraine outside the Alliance when, in practice, Ukraine is already part of NATO,” Zelensky told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, according to a readout published by the Ukrainian presidential office. “Ukraine truly deserves to become NATO’s 33rd member one day, and we will do everything to make that happen.”

During a visit to Belgium earlier this week, Zelensky said Kyiv faced the choice of nuclear weapons or NATO membership for its security.

“Who gave up their nuclear weapons? All of them. Only Ukraine,” Zelensky said during an address in Brussels. “Who is fighting today? Ukraine.” The Ukrainian leader later clarified that Kyiv did not intend to build nuclear weapons, but intended to emphasize that “there is no stronger security guarantee for us besides NATO membership.”

Ukraine retained a stockpile of nuclear weapons after the Soviet Union collapsed. In 1994, Ukraine gave up these nuclear weapons, although Kyiv did not have definitive control over then Soviet nuclear weapons before signing up for non-proliferation.

Ukraine then received a series of security guarantees from the U.S., Russia and the U.K.

The former head of Ukraine’s armed forces and current Ukrainian ambassador to the U.K., Valery Zaluzhnyi, said during an appearance at the Chatham House think tank in London on Thursday that NATO was the only option to make Ukraine’s security concrete.

“If we will not get a NATO invitation, morale will decrease,” Zelensky told The Financial Times in an interview published on Friday.

“I don’t know what the offer will be to us after the [U.S.] election,” Zelensky added.