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The cession, according to Zelenski, would be temporary, to stop the conflict. “And then, the territory [ocupat]Ukraine can get it back diplomatically,” he argued. “No one has offered us to enter NATO for one part or another of Ukraine. The fact is that it is a solution to stop the hot phase of the war”, the Ukrainian president explained in the interview broadcast this Friday and added that “the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country.”
Coinciding with the publication of the interview, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has urged NATO to formally invite Ukraine to next week’s meeting in Brussels, according to a letter to which Reuters has had access. The text states that securing an invitation to join the Alliance is part of the “victory plan” presented by Zelenski last month. Ukraine acknowledges it cannot join the alliance until the war is over, but says extending an invitation now would demonstrate to Russian President Vladimir Putin that it cannot achieve one of its main goals: preventing Kyiv from becoming a member of NATO
“Issuing the invitation should not be perceived as an escalation,” Sybiha says in the letter, adding: “On the contrary, with the clear understanding that Ukraine’s accession to NATO is inevitable, Russia will lose one of its main arguments for continuing this unjustified war.” In conclusion, Sybihan asks “to approve the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the Ministerial meeting of NATO Foreign Affairs on December 3 and 4, 2024.”
The Ukrainian president’s change of stance comes as the war escalates after US President Joe Biden crossed some of the red lines he had so far maintained regarding support for Ukraine: authorizing Kyiv to use US long-range missiles, known as ATACMS, to attack Russian territory and the supply of anti-personnel mines. Until now, Biden had denied that Ukraine could use US ATACMS for fear of an escalation of the conflict, but the victory of Donald Trump last November 5 has spurred the Democrat to strengthen Ukraine before the transfer of powers
In less than two months, Trump will take office as president of the United States, Kyiv’s main ally. During the war, the Republican has opposed Washington sending economic and military aid to Ukraine, and the new members of his future cabinet, such as future Secretary of State Marco Rubio, or special envoy Keith Kellogg to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine, have also been opposed to aid. On the contrary, the two new members for the incoming administration have been supportive of the idea that Kyiv should cede occupied territories to Russia to end the war. An approach that Trump himself made during one of his campaign events last September.
In recent days, Kyiv has begun using US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow to attack Russian positions. Putin, who once again warned against the use of nuclear weapons when Kyiv launched the first ATACMS, responded last week with a “new” hypersonic missile. The attack was a warning to Zelensky and the entire West. The missile used by Moscow did not carry a nuclear warhead, but it could carry one. In the televised message in which Putin explained the attack, the Russian president detailed that this type of projectile attacks targets at a speed of 2.5 or 3 kilometers per second and that the air defense systems created by the Americans in Europe ” they can’t intercept them.”
