Dousing Ukraine's NATO hope, reports claim that US President Donald Trump has aligned with Russia's long-standing demand that Ukraine be kept away from the alliance. In that case, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shed light on what Ukraine's Plan B will be.
In an interview, Zelenskyy said his country will have to double its army if it is denied NATO membership. "If Ukraine is not in NATO, it means that Ukraine will build NATO on its territory. So we need an army as strong as the Russians have today," the President said, adding that Ukraine would need money and weapons for the same. "We will ask the US for this."
Zelenskyy acknowledged that NATO membership currently looks unlikely for Ukraine due to opposition from Germany, Hungary and the United States. "However, Ukraine is not giving up its NATO aspirations. If the door to NATO remains shut, we will build NATO in our territory," Zelenskyy added.
He added that Europe could help with financing while the US can provide specific types of weapons, particularly referring to long-range missiles and Patriot air defence systems.
However, Zelenskyy's stance may be at odds with that of Russian President Vladimir Putin as the latter has insisted on Ukraine's demilitarisation. Not only has Russia called for reducing the Ukrainian army to a skeletal force of just 50,000 personnel, which is one-fifth of the pre-war total and a tiny fraction of Ukraine’s current military, it also wants curbs to be imposed on the quantity of armour Ukraine could possess, the types of missiles the country could develop, and the size of the Ukrainian Air Force.
This is besides the criterion that Ukraine renounce its NATO membership ambitions and agree not to enter into bilateral alliances or seek military aid from Western countries.
In response to these demands, Zelenskyy had insisted that he would not agree to reduce the size of its armed forces, even if it received entry into NATO.
But, the current US administration's view has doused Ukraine's hopes. “I don’t think it’s practical to have it, personally... They’ve been saying that for a long time, that Ukraine cannot go into NATO, and I’m OK with that,” Trump said on Wednesday after his phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
