US negotiators have floated the idea of Ukraine withdrawing its troops from the Donbas region and surrendering it to Russia in exchange for NATO membership, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from Donbas?’ This was the first time this had been raised,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Saturday.
The remarks come after US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff traveled to an EU summit in Dublin on Thursday, as part of ongoing efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. The two had visited Moscow the day prior and engaged in a round of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly stated that Ukraine was unwilling to give up sovereign territory, despite Moscow’s demands to cede the Donbas. However, he went on to say that if he received a proposal that contained security guarantees as well as no limits on Ukraine’s military and reconstruction funds, he would put it to a referendum.
Ukraine has long sought membership in NATO as a condition of any peace agreement, in order to deter any future threats. However, Russia has maintained that another NATO member on its border is unacceptable, and cited the alliance’s expansion as a casus belli for the full-scale invasion in 2022.
US officials have previously said that Ukrainian NATO membership was off the table. Zelenskyy said on Saturday that the US proposal made him believe that “NATO is back on the agenda,” but added, “You have also heard Putin’s signals, and this is a very difficult conversation.”
During the talks last week, Putin rejected the idea of de-militarized “grey zones” as part of a peace deal, as well as a Western troop presence in Ukraine. And while Moscow’s demands have shifted little since the onset of the invasion, Putin proposed a humanitarian ceasefire around a town in the Donbas, similar to the recent ceasefire brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump.
Russia currently occupies roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including about 88% of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas.
