President Donald Trump reaffirmed Wednesday that Ukraine wouldn’t be joining NATO ahead of his Friday White House meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
‘But I can tell you that NATO you can forget about,’ Trump said. ‘I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started.’
Trump was referencing Russian’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
It was originally Trump’s new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who had suggested that NATO membership of Ukraine was off the table.
Asked in mid-February about Hegseth’s comments, Trump responded ‘probably that’s true’ that it was ‘unlikely or impractical’ for Ukraine to join the strategic military alliance against against Russia.
‘They’ve been saying that for years, that Ukraine cannot go into NATO, and I’m OK with that,’ Trump said at the time, adding that he just wanted the war to end.
President Donald Trump reaffirmed Wednesday that he doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO ahead of his Friday White House meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky
