Only NATO or Nukes Can Save Ukraine From Russia, Estonian Foreign Minister Says

Estonia's foreign minister urged NATO allies not to exclude Ukraine from the transnational alliance in exchange for peace with Russia, warning that doing so would strand Ukraine in a "grey zone" in which its only means of deterring further aggression from Moscow would be increasingly devastating weapons.

Urmas Reinsalu told Newsweek that the NATO alliance cannot ignore Kyiv's accession ambitions—which he said remains the "elephant in the room"—while Russian revanchism poses a threat to Ukraine.

National leaders and NATO officials have defended the alliance's "open door" policy, refusing Russian demands to exclude Ukraine and repeatedly assuring Kyiv that it will one day be welcomed into the transatlantic bloc, though stressing accession should be a long-term goal.

Reinsalu, now in his second stint as Estonia's foreign minister, told Newsweek that NATO's commitment to its "open door" policy and eventual Ukrainian membership is "far from being enough."

"If we say that we would not in practice see Ukraine as a member of NATO after this war, it would mean that we are afraid—or predict that—Russia will attack again and then NATO countries will be involved in a world war, or at least a war over the European continent," Reinsalu said.

"This is already admitting that large-scale war will repeat itself. And this is something that I think is very dangerous from our perspective, that we are already admitting that we have not tamed [the danger], or we don't know the outcome of the current war."

[...] "Honestly, the only guarantee except NATO would be to deliver nuclear weapons to Ukraine," Reinsalu said, stressing that such a move is impossible, and undesirable, given the anti-proliferation commitments of NATO's nuclear powers.

"This is an academic remark on the context of these proposals, which guarantees would practically deliver and which would not," he added.

“The US will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending our sons and daughters to war. And they will have to to fight, because it's NATO that we're talking about, and they will be dying."

Zelensky says what expects the US to do if Ukraine loses. pic.twitter.com/P5LNPatT3q

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 28, 2023