Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on Sunday that Kyiv was ready to drop its long-standing NATO membership ambition in exchange for Western security guarantees.
His remarks came as he headed to Berling for a meeting with US and EU officials. The Ukrainian leader stressed that drop its NATO was “already a compromise” and that joining NATO had been Kyiv’s ambition for a long time.
"From the very beginning, Ukraine's conditions - or perhaps more accurately, our ambition - was NATO membership. And that would have provided real security guarantees. Some partners from the United States and Europe did not support this direction,” Zelenskiy said.
Zelenskiy explained that this is why Ukraine is currently focused on bilateral security guarantees with the United States, particularly US commitments comparable to NATO’s Article 5 - as well as assurances from European partners and other allies such as Canada and Japan. These guarantees, he said, would help deter any renewed Russian aggression, adding that accepting them already represents a concession from Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly portrayed Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO as a security threat, using that claim to justify Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Ukrainian leader offered to relinquish its NATO bid after talks with US officials Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Berlin over the weekend. US special envoy Steve Witkoff described the meeting with Zelenskiy as fruitful.
Last month, several U.S. senators said the initial 28-point proposal attributed to the United States did not originate with Trump, but instead amounted to a Russian “wish list” that was leaked to the media. A Reuters report likewise stated that the plan was based on a document written by Russia and submitted to the Trump administration in October.