| Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made it plain in Brussels yesterday (17 October): if his country does not get a NATO invite immediately, it will develop nuclear weapons. Facing the press after his participation at the EU summit, Zelenskyy was asked how he hoped to convince the US President, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, that Ukraine should receive an official invitation to join NATO “right now”. Receiving an invitation to join NATO "right now" is at the top of the five points from his ‘Victory Plan’, which he presented to EU leaders the same day. He said he would give an example of a conversation he had on this issue. “I talked to Trump about NATO. There are different signals in the media about his attitude. I gave him the example of the Budapest memorandum,” he said. Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine surrendered its numerous Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees from Russia, the US, the UK, France, and China to respect its sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders. But as we all know, none of the Western powers came to the defence of Ukraine when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. "Which country gave up its nuclear weapons? All of them? Only Ukraine. Who is fighting today? Only Ukraine. That is a fact. In my conversation with Donald Trump, I said to him, 'What is the way out?' Either Ukraine will have again nuclear weapons - and then it will be a certain protection for us - or we must have some alliance. Apart from NATO, we do not know any effective alliances today," said Zelenskyy. | 