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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 report in the Financial Times.
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.
The alliance itself has said Ukraine 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 grinding peace talks.
“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.
Zelensky had said on Saturday, 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.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
