Credit: Sky News
Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday night that he was willing to cede territory to Russia to end the war.
The Ukrainian president said for the first time that his country could give up land temporarily in exchange for a “Nato umbrella” over the territory Ukraine still holds.
He added that Kyiv could later negotiate “diplomatically” the return of the territory in the east that is currently under Russian control after a ceasefire was agreed.
“If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under [the] Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” Zelensky said through a translator in an interview with Sky News.
“That’s what we need to do fast, and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically,” he added.
The comments represent a shift in his position. Kyiv has previously said it would continue to fight Russia until Ukraine was returned to its internationally recognised borders, which include the four regions annexed by Putin in 2022, as well as Crimea.
Mr Zelensky hinted that the “Nato umbrella” would not be full membership of Nato, something Vladimir Putin has rejected as part of any future peace deal.
Rather, it could mean Nato member states, including Britain, the US, France and Germany, providing individual security guarantees to Ukraine.
Asked in the interview whether Kyiv would be willing to give up territory to Moscow altogether in exchange for full Nato membership, he said: “No one has offered us to be in Nato with just one part or another part of Ukraine.”
Full membership would deter Putin from launching a future invasion, as it would trigger a war with the West through Article 5.
Mr Zelensky said that the scenario in which the part of Ukraine not occupied by Russia is given Nato membership “has never been considered by Ukraine” because it has never been officially offered to Kyiv.
He added that recognising the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine as falling under Moscow’s control would be “impossible” because it would go “against the constitution of Ukraine”.
Switching to English, Mr Zelensky suggested that other countries had unofficially proposed a ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and Russia.
“A lot of different countries proposed a ceasefire,” he said. “The question is, ceasefire where?”
He went on to say that if a ceasefire was agreed, it must guarantee “that Putin will not come back”.
“We need [Nato protection] very much, otherwise [Putin] will come back. Otherwise, how are we going to go to [a] ceasefire? So for us it’s very dangerous.”
