Biden: Ukraine not yet ready for NATO membership

Alliance will only consider Ukraine’s bid after war is over

US President Joe Biden has stated in an interview for CNN that Ukraine is not yet ready for NATO membership. Russia’s war in Ukraine needs to end before the alliance can consider adding Kyiv to its ranks, he stressed.

“I don’t think there is unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war,” Biden said. “I think we have to lay out a rational path for Ukraine to be able to qualify to be able to get into NATO.”

However, Biden also said that he had told Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, that the US would keep providing security and weapons for Ukraine.

The Telegraph reported earlier today that Germany was set to insist on delaying Ukraine’s accession to NATO over fears the move could take the alliance to war with Russia.

An alliance source said Berlin would use the annual Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week to urge others to focus on security assurances, rather than membership proposals, to help Ukraine defend itself in the absence of accession. “Berlin is stand-offish at the prospect of offering immediate membership,” the source told The Telegraph. “It wants a process and time to develop guarantees to essentially block membership.”

The US and Germany are under intense pressure from other allies to show greater support for Ukraine’s eventual membership of NATO, just days before the military alliance’s leaders meet in Lithuania, as per The Financial Times: other members of the alliance were caught off-guard by the “conservative” US and German stance.