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The cession, according to Zelenski, would be temporary, to stop the conflict. “And then Ukraine can take back the (occupied) territory through diplomatic channels,” he said. “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”, said the Ukrainian president in the interview that was broadcast this Friday, adding that “the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders” and that “an invitation cannot be given to only one part of a country”.
Coinciding with the publication of the interview, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrà Sibiha has urged NATO to formally invite Ukraine to next week’s meeting in Brussels, according to a letter to the which Reuters has had access to. The text states that securing an invitation to join the Alliance is part of the “victory plan” presented by Zelenski last month. Ukraine acknowledges that it cannot join the alliance until the war is over, but it believes that extending an invitation now would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that it cannot achieve one of its main goals: to prevent Kyiv from become a member of NATO.
“Issuing the invitation should not be perceived as an escalation,” Sibiha 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, Sibiha asks “to approve the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the results of the Ministerial meeting of NATO Foreign Affairs on December 3-4, 2024.”
Key times for conflict resolution
The Ukrainian president’s change of stance comes amid the escalation of the war after US President Joe Biden crossed some of the red lines he had so far maintained regarding support for Ukraine: authorizing Kyiv to use of US long-range missiles, known as ATACMS, to attack Russian territory and the supply of anti-personnel mines. Until now, Biden had refused to allow Ukraine to use American ATACMS for fear of an escalation of the conflict, but the victory of Donald Trump on 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 the fact that Washington sends economic and military aid to Ukraine, and the new members of his future cabinet, such as the future Secretary of State Marco Rubio or the 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.
Over the past few days, Kyiv has begun using US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow to attack Russian positions. Putin, who 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 it didn’t carry a nuclear payload, but it could carry some. 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.”
