Ukraine has given up its ambition to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees as a commitment to ending the war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said ahead of talks with US envoys in Berlin.
The move represents a significant shift for Ukraine, which fought to join NATO as a guarantee against Russian attacks and enshrined that aspiration in its constitution. This also serves one of Russia’s war aims, even though kyiv has so far strongly opposed ceding territory to Moscow.
Zelenskiy said on Sunday that security guarantees provided by the United States, Europe and other partners, rather than NATO membership, represented a compromise on Ukraine’s part.
“From the beginning, Ukraine’s desire was to join NATO, because these are real security guarantees. Some American and European partners did not support this direction,” he said in response to journalists’ questions during a WhatsApp chat.
“So today, bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States, Article 5-type guarantees from the United States and security guarantees from our European peers as well as other countries – Canada, Japan – are an opportunity to prevent another Russian invasion,” Zelenskiy said.
“And this is already a commitment on our part,” he said, adding that security guarantees must be legally binding.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demanded that Ukraine formally abandon its NATO membership ambitions and withdraw its troops from the roughly 10% of Donbass that kyiv still controls. Moscow also said that Ukraine must be a neutral country and that no NATO troops could be stationed on Ukrainian territory.
Russian sources said earlier this year that Putin wanted a “written” commitment from major Western powers not to expand the U.S.-led NATO alliance eastward – shorthand for formally excluding Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other former Soviet republics.
Earlier, Zelenskiy called for a “dignified” peace and assurances that Russia would no longer attack Ukraine, as he prepared to meet U.S. envoys and European allies in Berlin to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to sign a peace deal that initially backed Moscow’s demands, Zelenskiy accused Russia of prolonging the war with deadly bombings of cities and Ukraine’s energy and water supplies.
Although the exact makeup of Sunday and Monday’s meetings was not disclosed, a U.S. official said Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were traveling to Germany for talks involving the Ukrainians and Europeans.
The decision to send Witkoff, who led negotiations with Ukraine and Russia on a U.S. peace proposal, appears to be a sign that Washington sees a chance for progress nearly four years after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine, the Europeans and the United States were studying a 20-point plan and that at the end of it there would be a ceasefire. He said kyiv was not conducting direct negotiations with Russia. Zelenskiy said a ceasefire along the current front lines would be a reasonable option.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is hosting Zelenskiy and European leaders for a summit in the German capital on Monday, the latest in a series of public shows of support for the Ukrainian leader from allies across Europe.
CRITICAL MOMENT
Britain, France and Germany are working to improve U.S. proposals, which in a draft published last month call on kyiv to cede more territory, abandon its ambition to join NATO and accept limits on its military.
European allies called the moment “critical” and likely to shape Ukraine’s future, and sought to shore up kyiv’s finances by using the Russian central bank’s frozen assets to fund the country’s military and civilian budget.
Putin hosted Witkoff and Kushner in a meeting in early December, which the Kremlin described as “constructive,” even though no significant progress was made.
Zelenskiy said hundreds of thousands of people were still without power after Russian attacks on electricity, heating and water supplies in large parts of Ukraine, and posted photos of burned and destroyed buildings.
“Russia is prolonging the war and seeking to inflict as much damage on our people as possible,” he said.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent relations with the West into a tailspin and intensified warnings from NATO and European leaders that Putin would not stop there.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in a speech in Berlin on Thursday that the military organization must be “prepared for the scale of war that our grandparents and great-grandparents endured” and asserted that “we are Russia’s next target.”
The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected the allegations.
“This seems to be a statement from a representative of a generation that managed to forget what the Second World War really was,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday.
“They don’t understand and, unfortunately, Mr Rutte, by making such irresponsible statements, simply does not understand what he is talking about,” Peskov added.
About The Author
