Monday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” National Security Advisor Michael Waltz reacted to pledges from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during peace talks regarding the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Zelensky offered to step down from his post if NATO membership was part of the deal.
Waltz said NATO membership would not be “on the table.”
“So it looks like the conversation — he was asked the question, Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, about NATO membership,” co-host Lawrence Jones said. “And he said he’s willing to step down. Now, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has said that that’s not realistic. I’ve talked to the president. He’s pretty much said the same thing in private and public. Is that back on the table? Because he was asked that question, and he said that he would be willing to step down.”
“That is not back on the table,” Waltz replied. “I do not see the United States having Ukraine enter into NATO and then having United States troops essentially obligated immediately in terms of Article 5 or coming to have U.S. troops coming directly in for the defense of Ukraine. That is very different. I want to be clear on that. We have President Macron coming. We have Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom coming. That’s very different than the U.S. commitment to NATO and existing NATO countries. We are absolutely committed to NATO writ large, our Article 5 treaty agreements with other NATO countries. But the security guarantees for Ukraine is a different conversation.”
He continued, “One of the things that we fully support is both France and the United Kingdom and other Europeans saying they would be willing to enter into very strong security guarantees for the future of Ukraine. That’s a different conversation. That’s one that we are encouraged by because, Lawrence, we’ve been asking for years for Europe to step up for its own defense, and we’ve been asking for years for Europe to pay for its own defense as the U.S. taxpayer has been taking an unfair burden into for decades now.”
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