Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has said he opposes Ukraine's membership in NATO, saying he does not believe it is in the security interests of the United States.
Source. Bloomberg
"I don't think Ukraine's membership in NATO is in our best interest," DeSantis said on The Glenn Beck Program podcast. – "All it would do is add more obligations for us, so if you add more obligations, what benefits do we get in return?"
He also added that the United States should not give Ukraine a "blank check" (a signed check that does not specify the amount of money – ed.) if it does not "use leverage to end the conflict."
DeSantis made this comment two days after President Joe Biden met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Biden administration announced a military aid package and also agreed to provide a small number of long-range ATACMS missiles.
However, future military aid packages to Ukraine must be approved by Congress after the allocated funds expire at the end of the month. At the same time, an influential bloc of US House Republicans criticized the idea of continuing to provide aid to Ukraine, saying that the US should instead focus on border security.
Earlier, Biden noted that he did not believe that now was the right time for Ukraine to join NATO. "I don't think there is unanimity in NATO about whether to bring Ukraine into the NATO family right now, at this moment, in the midst of a war," Biden said in a July interview with CNN.
Florida Gov. DeSantis was criticized earlier this year by senior Republican congressmen after he called Russia's invasion of Ukraine a "territorial dispute."