US President Joe Biden said on Saturday that Ukraine, which wants to become a member of NATO, will not benefit from preferential treatment.
Despite the Russian invasion, Ukraine will not receive preferential treatment in the NATO accession process, the US President said on Saturday. When asked by journalists if he would “facilitate” Kiev’s membership in the Atlantic Alliance, Joe Biden replied “no” and assured Ukraine should “respect all criteria”.
“So we’re not going to take it easy on ourselves,” he added.
The warheads in Belarus are “completely irresponsible”
Joe Biden also described the use of the first Russian nuclear warheads in Belarus as “completely irresponsible”. This deployment comes as a result of an agreement announced in March between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, who lent Russia his country’s territory to attack Ukraine.
Joe Biden’s comments come ahead of the next annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, which will be held on July 11-12. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that Ukraine would not be invited to join the alliance at this summit, even though he stressed that Ukraine would “eventually become a member of NATO”. The invitation is the first step in the membership process.
Meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy
The alliance plans to continue holding the first meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit. The Atlantic Alliance recently welcomed Finland, which officially became its 31st member on April 4th. Sweden has not yet received the necessary green light from two members, Turkey and Hungary, and remains at NATO’s door for the time being.
After decades of neutrality and then military non-alignment since the end of the Cold War, the two Nordic countries announced their candidacy for NATO last May, as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s demand to seal off the eastern expansion of the alliance .