US House Speaker Pelosi Reportedly Stops Short of Backing Ukraine's NATO Bid

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Politico she supported security guarantees for Ukraine but stopped short of backing its bid to join the NATO military alliance.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine was applying to join NATO in an expedited manner after Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions signed agreements on the accession of the territories.

"We are very committed to democracy in Ukraine," Pelosi said as quoted by Politico on Friday. "Let’s win this war. But I would be for them having a security guarantee."

The report said that Pelosi declined to explicitly back Ukraine's bid to join NATO when she was asked if she would support it.

The report, citing two US officials, said that Ukraine's announcement that it was seeking an accelerated entry to NATO caught the Biden administration as a surprise.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in earlier remarks that Ukraine's bid to join NATO should be addressed at another time.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, commenting on the statement by Zelensky, reiterated the alliance's position on the right of each country to determine its own path and on NATO's "open door" policy, but emphasized that the alliance would concentrate its efforts on assisting Ukraine to defend itself.