Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine gave up its Cold War-legacy nuclear arsenal in the 1990s “for nothing” and would seek to acquire nuclear bombs again if it wasn’t able to quickly join NATO in the aftermath of the present war or a ceasefire, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday.
- The Ukrainian president told British broadcaster Piers Morgan in an interview published on Tuesday night that, from his perspective, letting Ukraine into the NATO alliance would be a considerably better deal for its members because it would be so much cheaper. With NATO membership, Russia would not dare invade, he believes, but the level of security guarantees required to keep Moscow polite otherwise would be ruinously expensive.
- To keep Ukraine secure without NATO would mean Ukraine’s allies funding a million-man army, including troop “contingents” from Western nations as peacekeepers or reinforcements, funding missile systems to keep the skies clear, and Ukraine acquiring its own nuclear deterrent.
- He said, per the Piers Morgan show’s translation: “If not NATO, we will need to sustain a million [man] army, but the hundreds of thousands that we have will not be enough, they are on the offense and we do not have enough… That is huge money… so that’s why I think NATO is the cheapest option. If not NATO, then we must [build] this huge army with huge money, that means contingents from our partners, and undoubtedly that is a big deterrence missile package against the Ruskis”
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