Politics

REPORT: Biden Officials Consider Giving Ukraine Nukes Before End Of Term

Published

5 hours ago

November 25, 2024

A scramble to arm Ukraine with nuclear weapons has been set off by President Joe Biden as his administration looks to “Trump-proof” U.S. shipments of weapons and ammunition to the reeling European nation.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine saw its nuclear arsenal disassembled and decommissioned. That absence could be filled if Biden has his way, setting President-elect Donald Trump with a new calculus when he takes office and works to settle the country’s two-year war with Russia, a next-door neighbor and nuclear superpower. Military advisors told the New York Times they believe the threat of a nuclear Ukraine would be an immediate deterrent for Russian president Vladimir Putin but would also carry serious implications for stability in the global order.

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Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, explained that his country must maintain an arsenal strong enough to withstand cease-fire violations by Russia. On Friday Putin ordered the firing of a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in response to the U.S. authorizing Kiev to strike inside Russia with a new set of advanced weaponry, Reuters reported. The warring nations are locked in a bitter struggle to take as much land as possible within each other’s borders before Trump takes office and is expected to broker an end to the conflict.

Allies to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy believe his hand is strengthened if Ukraine can continue its encroachment into the Russian region of Kursk, a mission that was instigated by reports of North Korean troops assembling at its border. In response, Russia was forced to evacuate more than 200,000 residents. Putin called the aggression a “major provocation” costing his nation 1,200 sq km of Russian territory and 93 villages, according to the BBC. Some territory has been regained this month, and Russia still controls portions of Kharkiv and the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine.

Observers of the war believe the prospect of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO is now all but dead with Trump taking office. Zelenskyy, reading the writing on the wall, has opened channels of communication with the president-elect and top advisors like Elon Musk who have been critical of endless U.S. funding. In October President Biden authorized another $425 million in arms for Ukraine, but the logistics of delivering weaponry and other resources requires months of shipments. It’s probable that President-elect Trump, upon taking office, could order resources in transit to be paused or even returned stateside.

Two days after the election, Zelenskyy called to congratulate Trump, who was sitting with Musk and put him on the phone, ABC News reported. Zelenskyy thanked the Starlink founder for providing the network of satellites to make their call possible. The Ukrainian president wrote on X that he had an “excellent” call with Trump but made no mention of Musk. “I had an excellent call with President Trump and congratulated him on his historic landslide victory — his tremendous campaign made this result possible,” Zelenskyy wrote in his post.