American Vice President Kamala Harris assured Monday that she would not meet Vladimir Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine, without Kyiv being represented.
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If she is elected president, a meeting with the Russian president would “not take place bilaterally, without Ukraine,” she explained in an interview with CBS. “Ukraine must have a say in Ukraine’s future.”
On this major foreign policy issue, the Democratic candidate for the White House sought to clearly differentiate herself from her competitor Donald Trump, one month before the presidential election.
“If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now, let’s be clear,” she insisted. “He says, ‘Oh, I can end it on day one.’ Do you know what it is? This is a capitulation.”
Mr. Trump regularly assures that if returned to power, he would end the war in Ukraine even before taking office in January. But he never specifies how he would go about it.
“We support Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked aggression,” Harris said.
Asked about possible support for Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO, she did not want to look beyond the presidential election.
“These are questions that we will deal with … when we get to that point,” she said.
At the end of September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the United States, where he met with current US President Joe Biden, as well as Mme Harris and Mr. Trump.
After his meeting with Donald Trump, he said he was “grateful” for a “very productive” meeting, where he presented his “victory plan”.
Ukraine is worried about losing US support if Donald Trump wins. He regularly denounces the enormous amounts released by Washington for Kyiv since 2022.
Before his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, the Republican tribune had described him as “the best businessman on the planet”. “Every time he comes to our country, he leaves with 60 billion dollars,” he quipped.
Conversely, Joe Biden swore that “Russia will not win”. During his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, he announced an “increase in security aid” – without, however, mentioning the green light hoped for by Kyiv to fire long-range missiles manufactured in the United States towards Russia.
