Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes the November 5 US presidential election will provide a boost to his country’s NATO membership and force Russia to open peace talks.

Moscow’s intention to negotiate, nearly three years after the invasion, “it depends primarily on the US election“, underlined Zelensky in a meeting he had yesterday Monday with journalists. He made these statements on condition that they not be made public before today, Tuesday.

The Russians “will monitor US policy on this matter. And the US will make its policy known very quickly, after the elections, in my opinion,” continued Zelensky, assessing that Washington “it won’t wait until Januaryo”, when the new president will take office.

The US, the dominant power within NATO, has sponsored Ukraine military and financial aid of tens of billions of dollars since the start of the war in 2022. The continuation of that support, however, could be called into question if Republican Donald Trump, who has criticized aid to Kiev, wins the election.

Zelensky declined to comment on the thorny issue, but assured that he had “good” meetings with both Trump and his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, when he visited the US in September. “I had a good meeting with Trump. She was as positive as could be. And I am satisfied,” he commented, stating that his conversation with Harris was also “very good.”

The Ukrainian president hopes that Washington will agree to formally invite Ukraine to NATO, despite the war with Russia. Accession is seen as critical for Kiev but the US has so far taken a cautious stance. “After the elections, we hope there will be a more positive reaction from the US” who “do not want” to make significant changes during the pre-election period, he estimated.

Ukraine sees NATO as the only real protection it could have against neighboring Russia, which for its part says the invasion was precisely to block Kiev’s rapprochement with the North Atlantic Treaty. Ukraine wants to receive an invitation from NATO as soon as possible, even though 20% of its territory is under Russian occupation, and formally join immediately after the end of the war, Zelensky explained.

The invitation to join NATO is the first step in Zelensky’s recently presented “victory plan”. This plan also proposes the deployment on Ukrainian soil of deterrent, non-nuclear military means. The Ukrainian president believes the implementation of this plan could lead to “a just and swift end” to the war by 2025 and has rejected the idea of ​​ceding Ukrainian territory, even as his country’s military faces a shortage of men and supplies.

A possible positive US reaction to Ukraine’s NATO membership could also convince other countries that express reservations, such as Germany, Hungary and Slovakia. “The German side is skeptical about our joining NATO,” noted Zelensky, who believes that Berlin is “afraid of the Russian reaction.”

“We will all need to work hard with the German side. But there is no doubt that the US is influential in this matter“, he continued, assuring that “the majority of allies” view Ukraine’s accession to NATO positively.

Zelensky clarified that his country is not asking for nuclear weapons from its Western allies, after the ambiguous statements which he did on this subject last week. “We are not asking to be given nuclear weapons,” he stressed.

After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine agreed to hand over to Moscow the Soviet nuclear weapons stored on its territory, as part of an agreement, the so-called “Budapest Memorandum” reached in 1994 between Russia, the US and Britain. In return, the signatory countries guaranteed its security.

But Zelensky said his country returned the nuclear weapons “without receiving anything in return”. “We should trade them for” NATO membership, he commented.

Ukraine is in a difficult military situation, with its forces retreating for months on the eastern front and Russia pounding its cities as the Ukrainian military lacks adequate air defenses.

Civilians are killed every day from the strikes. On the night of Monday to Tuesday, two adults and a child were killed by a drone attack in Sumi, according to local authorities. Two more civilians lost their lives today in the regions of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk.