Ex-Ukrainian Army chief wants nukes
Only joining NATO, hosting nuclear weapons, or accepting a major foreign military force can truly guarantee Ukraine’s security, ex-top general Valery Zaluzhny has claimed.
Ukraine’s former armed forces commander-in-chief made the remarks in a piece run by The Telegraph on Saturday.
The general, who has reportedly been quietly building a campaign team from London to be able to run for president, shared his musings about how Russia could be defeated, how to build what he called a “better Ukraine,” and what “security guarantees” Kiev would have to secure in order to prevent the conflict with Moscow from reigniting in the future.
”Such security guarantees could include: Ukraine’s accession to NATO, the deployment of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory, or the deployment of a large allied military contingent capable of confronting Russia,” Zaluzhny wrote.
The former top general effectively repeated the most hawkish talking points of the incumbent Ukrainian leadership; Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly invoked such topics amid the conflict with Russia and even beforehand.
Moscow has repeatedly signaled that none of the purported “security guarantees” listed by Zaluzhny were even remotely acceptable. Russia has long opposed Ukraine’s NATO ambitions, citing the bloc’s eastward expansion as a threat to national security and naming it among the key factors behind the ongoing conflict.
Furthermore, the Kremlin has repeatedly said that Ukraine must adopt a neutral status as a part of any future peace agreement.
Kiev’s nuclear talk has also been strongly condemned by Russia, which has argued that the rhetoric only ramps up tensions and brings an all-out global war closer. The Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly lamented giving up its inherited Soviet nuclear arsenal in the early 1990s, claiming it received nothing in return.
In reality, however, it had always stayed under Moscow’s control, while independent Ukraine had no means to operate or maintain the warheads that ended up in its territory after the collapse of the USSR.
A potential deployment of foreign forces to Ukraine during or after the ongoing conflict has been ruled out by Russia as well. Moscow has argued that the potential move would only put Russia on a direct collision course with the collective West.
