Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says America ‘deserves a degree of gratitude’ for its billions in support to Kyiv after Ukrainian President slammed ‘absurd’ decision to delay NATO membership
- Top Biden aide Sullivan hit out at a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist who suggested that the U.S. was ‘afraid of Russia’ by not offering full NATO membership
- His comments came at a side event during a two-day meeting of the military alliance in Vilnius, Lithuania
- Joe Biden has ruled out offering Ukraine a pathway to NATO until Russia has been defeated
Joe Biden‘s administration has told Ukraine that the U.S. ‘deserves a degree of gratitude’ for its billions of dollars in military support to the war-torn nation.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan issued a thinly-veiled warning to Kyiv one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went on a social media tirade over what he called an ‘absurd’ delay in offering his country a pathway to full NATO membership.
Sullivan angrily dismissed claims from Ukrainian anti-corruption activist Daria Kaleniuk that the president ‘was afraid of Russia’ by not setting out a timeline for Ukraine to join the Brussels-based military alliance.
The campaigner also infamously ambushed ex-British prime minister Boris Johnson at a press conference in Warsaw last year, berating him for NATO’s failure to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
Speaking at a side event at the two-day NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, top Biden aide Sullivan dismissed her critcism, saying ‘there has been a lot of conspiracy theorizing that simply is not based on any reality whatsoever.’
‘The United States of America has stepped up to provide an enormous amount of capacity to help ensure that Ukraine’s brave soldiers have the ammunition, air defense, the infantry, fighting vehicles, the mine clearing equipment and so much else to be able to effectively defend against Russia’s onslaught and to take territory back as well.
‘I think the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude from the United States government for their willingness to step up and from the rest of the world as well.’
In a thinly-veiled swipe at Zelensky’s criticism of his Western allies, Sullivan said some of the charges leveled against the U.S. were ‘entirely unfounded and unjustified.’
