US and Russia spat escalates over Ukraine’s NATO entry

Agencies | Kyiv               

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The global nuclear tensions escalated further yesterday as both US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin got locked in statements regarding Ukraine’s potential entry into NATO.

Biden insisted that Ukraine would one day join the NATO military alliance, but that it could not happen while Kyiv is still at war with Moscow. "It’s not a question of whether they should or shouldn’t join.

It’s a matter of when they can join, and they will join NATO," Biden stated during a press conference in Finland following a NATO summit where no specific timeline for Ukraine’s membership was provided. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin echoed this sentiment, expressing confidence that Ukraine would join NATO once the war against Russian troops concluded.

In response, Putin warned that if Ukraine were to be admitted to NATO, it would make the world more vulnerable after the bloc vowed closer integration with Kyiv at its summit this week.

"I am sure that this will not increase the security of Ukraine itself and, in general, will make the world much more vulnerable and lead to additional tension in the international arena," Putin said.

Preventing Kyiv from joining the alliance was one reason President Vladimir Putin gave for launching the military operation in Ukraine. Putin spoke to journalists a day after a summit in Lithuania in which NATO pledged its backing for Kyiv but failed to offer it a timeline for membership.

Kyiv has been asking for more advanced and long-range weapons, including missiles, to push back Russian forces. Long-range missiles "cause damage, but nothing critical is happening in the combat zones where they have been used.

The same goes for foreign-made tanks," Putin told journalists. "The delivery of new weapons will only aggravate the situation for the Ukrainian side and fuel the conflict," he said.