WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukraine asks NATO for membership invite next week, letter shows
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has urged his NATO counterparts to issue an invitation to Kyiv at a meeting in Brussels next week to join the Western military alliance, according to the text of a letter seen by Reuters on Friday.
The letter reflects Ukraine's renewed push to secure an invitation to join NATO, which is part of a "victory plan" outlined last month by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to end the wartriggered by Russia's 2022 invasion.
Zelenskiy told UK-based Sky News that offering Ukraine NATO membership while allowing Russia to keep for the moment territory it had captured could be a solution to end the "hot stage" of the 33-month-old war.
Ukraine says it accepts that it cannot join the alliance until the war is over but extending an invitation now would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could not achieve one of his main goals - preventing Kyiv from becoming a NATO member.
"The invitation should not be seen as an escalation," Sybiha wrote in the letter.
"On the contrary, with a clear understanding that Ukraine's membership in NATO is inevitable, Russia will lose one of its main arguments for continuing this unjustified war," he wrote.
"I urge you to endorse the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministerial Meeting on 3-4 December 2024."
Zelenskiy told Sky News an invitation had to be officially extended to the entire country as Ukraine had no legal right to recognise any of its territory as Russian. NATO membership could then initially apply to only the part of Ukraine that Kyiv controls.
"No one has offered us to be in NATO for one part or another part of Ukraine. The fact is, it is a solution to stop the hot stage of the war because we can just give NATO membership to the part of Ukraine that is under our control," Zelenskiy said.
"But the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders ... That's what we need to do fast and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically."
NO NATO CONSENSUS
NATO diplomats say there is no consensus among alliance members to invite Ukraine at this stage. Any such decision would require the consent of all NATO's 32 member countries.
NATO has declared that Ukraine will join the alliance and that it is on an "irreversible" path to membership. But it has not issued a formal invitation or set out a timeline.
Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister in charge of NATO affairs, said Kyiv understood that the consensus for an invitation to join NATO "is not yet there" but the letter was meant to send a strong political signal.
"We have sent a message to the allies that invitation is not off of the table, regardless of different manipulations and speculations around that," she told Reuters.
In his letter, Sybiha argued an invitation would be the right response "to Russia's constant escalation of the war it has unleashed, the latest demonstration of which is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons".
In recent days, however, diplomats have said they do not see any changes of stance among NATO countries, particularly as they await the Ukraine policy of the United States - the alliance's dominant power - under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
Zelensky changes position on ceasefire terms
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said for the first time that he might be willing to agree to a ceasefire with Russian troops still in control of the land claimed by Kiev.
Zelensky previously insisted that only “complete withdrawal” of Russian forces and the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders should serve as precondition for any future peace negotiations.
In an interview with Sky News on Friday, chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay asked Zelensky to comment on recent reports that US President-elect Donald Trump’s team is considering allowing Russia to keep the territory claimed by Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine becoming a NATO member.
“Ukraine joins NATO, but Russia takes control and keeps the land that it has to date. Would that be a possibility?” Ramsay asked.
Zelensky said that it could potentially serve as a foundation for a ceasefire. “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” he said.
“We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way,” he added.
Zelensky stressed that such an arrangement has never been officially offered to Ukraine. He clarified that Kiev will not formally renounce claims on Crimea and four other regions, which joined Russia following referendums in 2014 and 2022, respectively.
“We cannot, by law, recognize any Ukrainian territory under occupation of Russia as Russian. That is impossible. That is against the Constitution of Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine applied to join the US-led alliance in September 2022. NATO has made it clear, however, that Ukraine could not become a member until its conflict with Russia is resolved.
Moscow has insisted that Ukraine must withdraw its troops from the parts of Donbass it controls and recognize Russia’s current borders. Russia further said that Ukraine must abandon its plan to join NATO and become a permanently neutral country.
President Vladimir Putin has cited NATO’s expansion eastward and military cooperation with Ukraine as one of the root causes behind the conflict.
Reuters/RT
