A primary goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitious invasion of Ukraine was to destroy NATO, and keeping the alliance together is critical for the security of the U.S. and the West, President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview released Sunday.
Biden and other NATO leaders will meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, starting on Tuesday. Talks will be centered around providing Ukraine with military support and a possible path to membership in the alliance.
“I believe Putin has had an overwhelming objective from the time he launched 185,000 troops into Ukraine, and that was to break NATO,” Biden said. “So, holding NATO together is really critical.”
Biden said when he first met Putin two years ago in Geneva, the Russian leader sought a commitment from the U.S. to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Biden declined to make the pledge, citing the alliance’s “open-door policy. We’re not going to shut anybody out.”
But Biden acknowledged there is little desire among current NATO members to “bring Ukraine into the NATO family now” because the defense commitment would mean that all alliance members, including the U.S., would be at war with Russia. He also stressed that it will take Ukraine some time to meet NATO qualifications.
“I have spoken with (Ukraine President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy at length about this, and one of the things I indicated is the United States would be ready to provide, while the process was going on, … security a la the security we provide for Israel,” he said.
Developments:
∎ Biden said he was “optimistic” Sweden would soon get the green light to join NATO. He said Sweden is making some adjustments to its laws at the behest of Turkey, the holdout against Swedish membership, and that a deal could include strengthening Turkey’s air defenses.
∎ Russia claimed it shot down a Ukraine missile over the Russia’s Rostov region along the Ukraine border. Regional Gov. Vasily Golubev said no damage or injuries were reported.
Zelenskyy: Counteroffensive advancing, ‘initiative is on our side’
The Ukraine counteroffensive is slowly gaining ground, but “every day means new losses of Ukrainians,” Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian president, in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” noted that several months ago his military was forced to retreat from some areas of eastern Ukraine. Now some of that land is being taken back. He dismissed claims that some Western leaders were disappointed in the pace of the gains, saying all are well aware of the “total strength of Russians” and amount of equipment they have at their disposal.
“Of course, we would all like to see the counteroffensive accomplished in a shorter period of time, but there’s reality,” Zelenskyy said, adding that “today the initiative is on our side.”
White House was ‘not involved’ in secret Ukraine talks
The White House says that it was aware of but did not encourage or sanction secret talks about Ukraine between a group of former senior U.S. officials and Russians close to Putin’s government. Members of the Council on Foreign Relations met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in April to begin laying the groundwork for an end to the war, NBC reported last week. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said Sunday that the U.S. government “was not involved in any way” in the conversations.
“We weren’t passing messages through them,” Kirby said.
− Francesca Chambers
