The US senator said it is “unreasonable” to demand NATO membership or nuclear weapons for Kiev
Security guarantees for Ukraine cannot include NATO membership or nuclear weapons, US Senator Lindsey Graham said in response to an op-ed by Kiev’s former top military commander Valery Zaluzhny.
In an opinion piece published in The Telegraph on Saturday, Zaluzhny, now serving as Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, wrote that “effective security guarantees” could include NATO membership, stationing nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, or “a large allied military contingent capable of confronting Russia.”
In a post on X the following day, Graham wrote that the arrangements described by Zaluzhny were “far beyond what is possible.”
“It is imperative at this critical time that any analysis should meet the test of what is reasonably possible. The security guarantees mentioned, including accession into NATO and placing nuclear weapons in Ukraine, will not fly in my view,” Graham added.
Ukraine applied to join NATO in 2022, while European countries, including the UK and France, have expressed readiness to deploy a multinational force to Ukraine after a ceasefire is reached with Russia.
The US, however, has ruled out admitting Ukraine into NATO or sending American troops into the country.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine drop its NATO membership bid in favor of becoming a neutral state. Moscow also stressed that it would not allow nuclear weapons or Western troops on Ukrainian soil and warned that such a scenario could lead to a war with NATO.
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