According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the United States has held out the prospect of Nato membership for Ukraine if the country gives up territories in the Donbas. “The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins Nato? Would Ukraine withdraw from the Donbas?’ That was the first time this question was asked,” Zelensky said on Friday, 13 November, to reporters, as t-online reports. The remarks were initially subject to an embargo until Saturday.
According to the president, US representatives raised the question for the first time in the latest round of negotiations, as the Kyiv Post reports. Zelensky does not want to decide on such a deal alone. If there were a concrete offer, he would want to let Ukrainians vote on it in a referendum.
“If the American side confirms this to us together with other Nato colleagues, then I will ask the opinion of our society: Do we accept or do we not accept? I have no right to do that at my own discretion. But it needs something concrete, which does not yet exist, and all of this is under discussion,” Zelensky said, according to the Kyiv Post.
The president draws a red line on the question of recognising occupied territories. Even with a withdrawal from the Donbas, Ukraine will not officially recognise the territories occupied by Russia as Russian state territory, t-online reports. According to the Kyiv Post, Zelensky told reporters: “Undoubtedly without any recognition of occupied territories as Russian.”
According to the Kyiv Post, Kyiv is negotiating with international partners on a comprehensive security package. It should include concrete guarantees from Nato and the EU, a strong Ukrainian army with guaranteed troop levels and arms deliveries, as well as funding for a reconstruction plan with clear financial sources. Zelensky named guarantees modelled on Article 5 of the Nato Treaty as the minimum standard for a solution.
Some partners had proposed bilateral security arrangements such as those the US maintains with Israel or with Arab states in the Middle East – with US bases, naval and air force presence, and air defence systems such as Patriot batteries. According to the Kyiv Post, however, Zelensky was reserved about their reliability and pointed out that Nato’s mutual defence clause has been activated only once in history, after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US.
According to him, Denmark and other Nordic countries actively support Ukraine’s Nato accession. The question of Ukrainian Nato membership has returned to the diplomatic agenda, Zelensky said. He also said he had told the US negotiators directly that Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted. “When Putin says something about state borders, it is certainly not about shrinking Russia’s territory, is it? That is why there is no trust in the comrade in the Kremlin,” he said, according to the Kyiv Post.
The remarks follow the second round of trilateral talks under US mediation in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November, as well as subsequent consultations in Moscow between Putin and the US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. According to the Kyiv Post, the White House announced progress on a major prisoner exchange and on future European participation in the negotiations. However, fundamental points of dispute – territory and security guarantees after the war – remained unresolved.
