US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin admitted that he would not want Ukraine, Finland and Sweden to join NATO if he were on the side of Russia.
During a US Senate hearing, lawmakers asked Austin whether he would want Kiev to join NATO if he were Russia.
“Of course, if I were Russia, I wouldn’t want that,” Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin replied.
He added that if he were Russia, he would also not want Sweden and Finland, which are already NATO members, to join the alliance. In addition, Austin refused to comment on how Washington looks at the issue of Crimea in the context of a possible settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.
Earlier, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Dmitriy Medvedev, said that the Russian special military operation was aimed at “dislodging the Kiev authorities”, which professes “the ideology of neo-Nazism”, and completely disarming the Ukrainian Armed Forces.