Zelensky says US floated trading Donbas withdrawal for NATO membership
Ukraine's president says American negotiators raised the idea for the first time, and that any deal would go to Ukrainians for a final say.
KYIV — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said U.S. negotiators have floated the idea of Ukraine withdrawing from the part of the eastern Donbas region it still controls in exchange for joining NATO, describing it as the first time the two issues had been linked.
Speaking to journalists on Nov. 13, Zelensky recounted the question as put to Kyiv: "The Americans raised the question: 'What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from Donbas?' This was the first time this issue had been raised."
Donbas refers to Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, a strategically vital industrial region in the east that Russian forces have been unable to capture since 2014. Moscow has long demanded the whole of it; Ukraine has sought NATO's protection.
Zelensky said Ukrainians would have the final say on any such arrangement, but only if the United States and other NATO allies first agree to a security package. He said that package would need to include guarantees from NATO and the EU, a strong Ukrainian army with adequate troops, weapons and financial support for a set period, and a so-called Prosperity or Recovery Plan backed by clearly identified funding.
"If the American side confirms precisely this to us, together with other NATO partners, then I will ask our Ukrainian society what it thinks: do we accept it or not? I have no right to make that decision on my own," he said.
He added that any deal would come "without any recognition of the occupied territories as Russian," and stressed the proposal remains incomplete. "We need specifics, and we don't have them yet. All of this is still under discussion."
According to Zelensky, he sought guarantees modeled on NATO's Article 5 as an "absolute minimum," while Washington now says the arrangement could resemble Articles 4 and 5. When he asked whether American soldiers would be deployed on Ukrainian soil under such guarantees, he said the U.S. side answered "no." U.S. officials described the proposal as bilateral security guarantees similar to those Israel holds.
The disclosure follows U.S.-mediated talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10-11, the first such negotiations in nine months, which ended without a political breakthrough though the sides agreed in principle to a prisoner exchange involving more than 1,000 people.
Washington has not publicly presented a completed peace proposal. Independent outlets have reported Zelensky's account of a question floated in negotiations, without a detailed territorial map, timetable, enforcement mechanism or commitment from NATO's other members.