The West must still provide legal assurances Ukraine is completely safe even if is currently not in a position to grant Kyiv NATO membership, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted on Tuesday.
Zelensky said that if they are not ready to take Ukraine into NATO because Russia does not want that, Ukraine’s partners should work out common security guarantees for the country amid the ongoing invasion by Moscow to ensure the protection of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and borders.
The Ukrainian leader, speaking from a heavily guarded government compound in Kyiv, has also praised the West for sending them weapons and slapping new sanctions on Moscow, but, at the same time, called it to do even more, including imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Although the US President Joe Biden had earlier told him it’s still not the time to introduce such a measure, Zelensky reiterated the call for shutting down airspace over his country to be shut, claiming that in such case Ukraine could defeat the aggressor with much less blood and that it’s not about dragging NATO countries into war.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki stressed on Monday that, on top of ruling out sending US troops to fight Russia in Ukraine, President Biden has also ruled out the no-fly zone, which would require the US military to potentially directly engage Russian air forces.
Psaki pointed out that this would definitely be escalatory and potentially put the US into a place where it’s in a military conflict with Russia and that’s not something President Biden wants to do.
That idea was also ruled out by the US allies in NATO, with the Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stressing that they have no intentions of moving into Ukraine neither on the ground nor in the airspace, claiming they must ensure the situation doesn’t escalate even further into full-fledged war in Europe involving NATO allies.
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