The arrangement would require Ukraine to recognize Russian gains, the country’s leader says
Ukraine will not relinquish its claim to Russian territories that belonged to Kiev before 2014 as a precondition for joining NATO, Vladimir Zelensky has said.
Speaking at a joint press conference with new EU Council President Antonio Costa on Sunday, Zelensky reiterated that Kiev would “never legally recognize any occupation of our lands” by Russia. He was referring to Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye, which voted to join the country in a series of referendums.
This means that “there cannot be a NATO invitation that excludes parts of Ukraine’s territory,” he added.
“Such an invitation would be an automatic acknowledgment that all other [lost] territories are not just at risk, but also not Ukrainian. Ukraine will never agree to this. If there’s an invitation, it must include all territories,” he stated.
Kiev also understands that Article 5 of the NATO Treaty – which stipulates that an attack on a bloc’s member is an attack on all of them – “cannot fully operate during a war across Ukraine’s entire territory because countries fear being dragged into the conflict,” according to Zelensky.
“Ukraine has never involved anyone else in this war – by which I mean the armies of NATO member states,” he added. As for potential security guarantees for Ukraine, Zelensky claimed that it had not received any specific offers from its backers.
Ukraine first identified NATO membership as a strategic goal in 2019. This had been a red line for Moscow, which for years had expressed concerns about the bloc’s creeping expansion towards its borders. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Kiev’s NATO ambitions were the key reason behind the current conflict.
Zelensky’s comments come after he signaled last week that Kiev may be willing to agree to a ceasefire with Moscow without recapturing Ukrainian-claimed territory. He has also acknowledged that Ukraine’s army is too weak to retake its lost territories by force, adding that his country must rely on diplomacy to achieve that goal.
Moscow has said it is ready for dialogue over Ukraine but insisted that any settlement must recognize the territorial reality on the ground. It has also ruled out freezing the conflict, arguing that all the goals of its military operation – including Ukrainian neutrality, denazification, and demilitarization – must be achieved.
