THE Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskysaid on Thursday that he did not consider it necessary to amend the country’s Constitution, which sets the goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), just days after expressing his willingness to renounce this goal in exchange for strong security guarantees.
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Preventing Ukraine from joining the military alliance is one of Russia’s main demands to end its nearly four-year-old war..
Zelensky said Sunday that Ukraine could make concessions on NATO membership if it received bilateral security guarantees with protections similar to NATO’s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member an attack on all.
“To be honest, I don’t think we need to change the Constitution of our country,” Zelensky said Thursday when asked by a reporter, adding that it was up to the Ukrainian people to make decisions about their Constitution. “Certainly not because of calls from the Russian Federation or anyone else,” he said.
Zelensky has long argued that security guarantees against further Russian incursions, backed by allies including the United States, are an essential part of any potential peace deal. However, he said on Thursday that the discussions risked degenerating into pressure on Ukraine to make concessions in other areas in exchange for these guarantees.
Although he acknowledged that there were no direct suggestions on this during the negotiations, any type of deal involving security guarantees is unacceptable for kyiv. “There has to be a partnership. There can be no give and take here,” he said.
Since 2019, kyiv has enshrined in the Constitution the strategic objective of joining NATO and the European Union (EU). However, he acknowledges that, at the moment, he would not be accepted into the alliance by all its members.
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