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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he is willing to sacrifice Kyiv's longstanding demand for NATO membership in exchange for security guarantees from allies like the U.S, according to a new report.
Why It Matters
Ukraine has insisted it needs concrete assurances Russia will not launch another attack on the country when a future agreement is signed to stop the nearly four years of war in Eastern Europe. Kyiv has consistently said NATO membership is the best way to secure these guarantees.
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The alliance itself has said Kyiv is on the path to membership, while Russia has pushed back in peace talks and called for Ukraine to be neutral.
Security guarantees, and the form they could take, have long been one of several major sticking points in peace talks. Difficult questions over territory and the size of Ukraine's military remain.
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What To Know
“We are talking about bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States—namely, Article 5-like guarantees," and agreements with European countries, plus other nations like Canada and Japan," Zelensky told journalists via message on Sunday, according to The Financial Times.
Newsweek has reached out to Ukraine's presidential office via email for comment.
Zelensky said on Saturday that Ukrainian officials were "working to ensure that peace for Ukraine is dignified, and to secure a guarantee—a guarantee, above all, that Russia will not return to Ukraine for a third invasion."
Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula to the south of mainland Ukraine, in 2014, when it also backed pro-Kremlin separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February 2022.
The Ukrainian leader said Kyiv has submitted a new 20-point plan, and other documents like a write-up of proposed security guarantees, to U.S. officials.
Washington's desire for Ukraine and Russia to quickly ink a peace deal has raised deep concerns in Kyiv and among the country's European backers that a deal could benefit Russia and damage European security. An initial 28-point version was widely seen as favorable to Moscow and the U.S. was forced to deny it was a Russian proposal.
Zelensky said on Sunday he was already in Berlin ahead of talks with a U.S. delegation on Monday. Axios reported on Friday he would meet with President Donald Trump's Russia envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in Germany.
A senior, unnamed U.S. official told the outlet that the Trump administration was willing to offer NATO-style security guarantees that would be approved by Congress.
NATO nations are protected by the alliance's Article 5, a part of its founding treaty meaning nations will support a fellow member under armed attack with a response they deem appropriate.
But Kyiv feels aggrieved by the outcome of the Budapest Memorandum, a political pledge in which Ukraine agreed to give up nuclear weapons in the country in exchange for security "assurances" about its independence and sovereignty from the U.S, U.K. and from Russia as the then-Soviet Union disintegrated. Russia violated the memorandum in 2014 and 2022.
Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told state media on Sunday Moscow wanted a "certain system of guarantees not only for security but also for the implementation of these agreements."
What People Are Saying
Trump "doesn’t want any more talk, he wants action," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday. "He wants this war to come to an end."
"We are currently preparing for meetings with the U.S. side and our European friends in the coming days," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
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