By Friederike Heine and Matthias Williams and Olena Harmash
BERLIN/KIEV, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Ukraine has renounced its ambition to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees as a commitment to end the war with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said
The move represents a significant shift for Ukraine, which fought to join NATO as a safeguard against Russian attacks and included that aspiration in its Constitution. It also serves one of Russia’s war aims, although Kiev has so far held firm against ceding territory to Moscow.
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Zelenskiy stated this Sunday that the .
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‘From the beginning, Ukraine’s desire was to join NATO, as these are real guarantees of security. Some US and European partners did not support this direction,’ he said in response to questions from reporters in a WhatsApp chat.
“So today, the bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the US, the Article 5-like guarantees for us from the US, and the security guarantees from European peers as well as other countries — Canada, Japan — are an opportunity to prevent another Russian invasion,” Zelenskiy said.
‘And this is already a commitment on our part,’ he said, adding that security guarantees must be legally binding.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demanded that Ukraine officially renounce its ambitions to join NATO and withdraw its troops from the roughly 10% of Donbas that Kiev still controls. Moscow also stated that Ukraine must be a neutral country and that no NATO troops can be stationed on Ukrainian territory.
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Russian sources claimed earlier this year that Putin wants a ‘written’ commitment from major Western powers not to expand the US-led NATO alliance eastward – shorthand for formally excluding Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other former Soviet republics.
Previously, Zelenskiy had called for a ‘dignified’ peace and assurances that Russia would not attack Ukraine again, as he prepared to meet US envoys and European allies in Berlin to bring an end to Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Pressured by US President Donald Trump to sign a peace deal that initially supported Moscow’s demands, Zelenskiy accused Russia of prolonging the war through deadly bombings of cities and Ukraine’s energy and water supplies.
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While the exact composition of Sunday and Monday’s meetings was not disclosed, a U.S. official said Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were traveling to Germany for talks involving Ukrainians and Europeans.
The decision to send Witkoff, who led negotiations with Ukraine and Russia over a U.S. peace proposal, appeared to be a sign that Washington saw a chance for progress nearly four years after the 2022 Russian invasion.
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Zelenskiy said that Ukraine, the Europeans and the US are analyzing a 20-point plan and that, at the end of it, there will be a ceasefire. He said Kiev does not hold direct talks with Russia. Zelenskiy said a ceasefire along the current front lines would be a reasonable option.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is hosting Zelenskiy and European leaders for a summit in the German capital on Monday, the latest in a series of public displays of support for the Ukrainian leader from allies across Europe.
CRITICAL MOMENT
Britain, France and Germany have been working to improve the U.S. proposals, which, in a draft released last month, called for Kiev to cede more territory, abandon its ambition to join NATO and accept limits on its military.
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European allies described this moment as ‘critical’ and one that could shape Ukraine’s future, and sought to bolster Kiev’s finances by using frozen Russian central bank assets to finance the country’s military and civilian budget.
Putin hosted Witkoff and Kushner in a meeting in early December, which the Kremlin praised as ‘constructive’, although no significant progress was achieved.
Zelenskiy said hundreds of thousands of people were still without power after Russian attacks on power, heating and water supplies across vast areas of Ukraine, and published photos of burning and destroyed buildings.
‘Russia is prolonging the war and seeks to inflict as much damage as possible on our people,’ he said.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent relations with the West plummeting and intensified warnings from NATO and European leaders that Putin would not stop there.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in a speech in Berlin on Thursday that the military organization should be ‘prepared for the scale of war that our grandparents or great-grandparents suffered’ and claimed that ‘we are Russia’s next target’.
The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected such allegations.
“This seems to be a statement from a representative of a generation that has managed to forget what the Second World War was really like,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television reporter Pavel Zarubin on Sunday.
‘They have no understanding, and unfortunately, Mr Rutte, in making such irresponsible statements, simply does not understand what he is talking about,’ Peskov added.
(Reportage by Friederike Heine, Matthias Williams and Olena Harmash)
