UPDATE: Zelensky claimed to journalists on Tuesday, October 22 that "We are not asking for nuclear weapons to be given to us."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is upping the ante with the United States and its NATO by saying that either Ukraine becomes a member of the military alliance or it will acquire the nuclear weapons it relinquished in 1994, The National Pulse reported.
The United States and most of the 32 members in NATO are reluctant to admit Ukraine because of Russia's insistence that Ukraine retain some degree of neutrality and because Ukrainian membership would mean its war with Russia would automatically become NATO’s war with Russia.
Speaking to a conference of European Union (EU) leaders in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday, Zelensky said that the other option for Ukraine is to become a nuclear power again, as it was in the immediate aftermath of its independence from Russia. “What way out do we have? Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, or we have to be in some kind of alliance,” Zelensky said, before insisting he could prefer NATO membership over nuclear weapons. After the implosion of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was left with a portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal but let go of them in 1994 as part of the Budapest Memorandum on Ukrainian sovereignty.
Zelensky said he cannot comprehend why the United States or NATO is apprehensive about how Ukrainian membership in NATO would necessarily put the alliance in a war footing with Russia. “An invitation is a preventive step to show that it is not [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who is changing the world,” he said, not explaining why that would prevent an escalation of the war. Zelensky also revealed that he relayed his message about again owning nuclear weapons when he spoke to former President Donald Trump during the Ukrainian leader’s last visit to the United States when he toured an armaments factory in Scranton, PA.
NATO continues to kick the can of Ukrainian membership down the road, saying it is a long term objective but not achievable in the short term. "I think NATO's position on this is very clear. We stated at the 75th anniversary summit this summer that Ukraine is on an irreversible path to membership and that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance. We are not at the stage where the Alliance is discussing issuing an invitation in the short term," U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said on Oct. 16, according to the Voice of America.
"But, as always, we will continue talks with our friends in Ukraine about how they can move toward the Alliance," Smith said. France has recently offered to send “kamikaze” drones to Ukraine to help in the war with Russia. Zelensky has failed to get US support to use American missiles against targets inside of Russia after Putin warned that such actions could result in a nuclear response from Russia.
