US may lift veto on Ukraine's NATO invitation if Harris wins election – Le Monde

The administration of US President Joe Biden reportedly has no significant objections to inviting Kyiv to join NATO and, should Kamala Harris win the election on 5 November, may begin to take steps in that direction. Source: French newspaper Le Monde; European Pravda Details: Biden used a short visit to Berlin on 18 October to engage in discussions with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer regarding current matters concerning Ukraine and the Middle East.

As for Ukraine, the four leaders sought to coordinate their responses to the Victory Plan that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has presented to them in recent weeks.

At the top of the list of sensitive topics was an invitation for Kyiv to join NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy believes that such an invitation could ideally come before December and the end of Joe Biden's term, but Ukraine's integration into the Alliance will become a reality at best after the war is over. The newspaper noted that so far, the United States and Germany are blocking any prospect of NATO enlargement to include Ukraine, while France and the United Kingdom are more favourably disposed to the idea.

However, according to some reports, the Americans no longer have any fundamental objections to inviting Ukraine to join the Alliance.

It is assumed that if Kamala Harris wins, Joe Biden could take concrete action on this issue. "If Kamala Harris is elected, it is quite possible that Biden could move in this direction during the transition period [before the inauguration of the new president - ed.]. If it's Trump, this argument no longer applies, and the slightest initiative by Biden risks making the situation worse," a European diplomatic source said.

The most optimistic sources believe that a change in the United States' stance could also lead to a change in the course of intransigent Germany. Regardless, the four leaders who convened in Berlin on Friday cannot address this issue independently; the decision requires the consensus of all 32 NATO members. Turkiye, Hungary, and Slovakia are likely to resist any swift move towards closer ties between Kyiv and the Alliance.

Background: 

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stressed that he was horrified by Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Victory Plan, the first point of which calls for immediately inviting Ukraine to join NATO.
• Commenting on Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Victory Plan, the White House stated that there is no consensus in NATO on Ukraine's accession to the Alliance.
• During his visit to Kyiv on 19 October, Jean-Noel Barrot, France's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, said that his country was open to the idea of inviting Ukraine to join NATO.

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