McCaul warns admitting Ukraine to NATO immediately ‘would put us at war with Russia’

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Sunday said that Ukraine shouldn’t be admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) immediately, warning that doing so would put the NATO allies at war with Russia. 

“I think it should be incremental,” McCaul said of admitting Ukraine to the alliance on CNN’s “State of the Union. 

“I think first, they have to win the counter offensive. Secondly, have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace settlement. We cannot admit Ukraine into NATO immediately; that would put us at war with Russia under Article Five,” the Foreign Affairs chairman said. Under Article Five of the NATO treaty, an attack on one NATO member is considered an attack on all. 

“I think what the conversation is going to be about is what security agreements can be put in place with Ukraine as a predicate to perhaps NATO — ascension of Ukraine into NATO, but I think it’s way too premature to be talking about that,” McCaul said. 

Russia’s war on Ukraine has crossed the 500-day mark as Ukraine pushes its counteroffensive efforts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long argued that Kyiv should be admitted to the alliance of European and North American nations.

Pressed by host Jake Tapper on whether he’d support admitting Ukraine to NATO after the war is over, McCaul said it would still “have to be done, again, incrementally.” 

“I think a security agreement with Ukraine to lay the predicate down the road. They would have to come up to certain standards within NATO qualifications to be admitted,” he said.

McCaul also said Ukrainians have “demonstrated a will to fight, a will for freedom and democracy against tyranny and oppression. I think they’ve earned it, but we have to put it on the right path forward, not an immediate ascension into NATO.”