Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would ask Ukrainians whether to leave Donbas for NATO membership if a wider security package were offered, after U.S. negotiators raised the question.
Zelenskyy told journalists Friday, Nov. 13, that U.S. negotiators had for the first time linked a Ukrainian withdrawal from the eastern region with joining the military alliance. CBS News reported his remarks Sunday, Nov. 15. He described the exchange as a question raised by the U.S. side.
He said the package would pair security commitments from NATO and the European Union with weapons and financial backing, plus a troop contingent he considered adequate. If those terms were offered, he said, he would ask Ukrainians whether to accept the possibility. He left the method of public input unspecified.
A guarantee modeled on Article 5 of NATO's treaty would be Ukraine's minimum requirement, Zelenskyy said. Article 5 is the alliance's collective-defense provision: an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. Zelenskyy said he was unsure such a guarantee would work and wanted more detail about potential membership. “I have no right to make that decision on my own,” he said.
His comments add conditions to Zelenskyy's earlier account of the U.S. Donbas question. EconoTimes reported that account after peace talks in Abu Dhabi and Ireland, where the connection between NATO membership and territorial withdrawal had not previously been raised, according to Zelenskyy.
CBS described Donbas's political status as a recurring complication in peace negotiations. Russian forces control much of the region, though EconoTimes' earlier coverage of Zelenskyy's Donbas position said the areas under discussion remained under Kyiv's control and that Zelenskyy had rejected ceding them. In September 2022, Russia declared four Ukrainian regions annexed after votes in occupied parts of Donbas that CBS said were widely dismissed as sham elections. The United States and United Nations have not recognized those claims.