Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggests Ukraine would give up Russian-occupied territory for NATO membership.

 Extract from ABC News

• Topic:Unrest, Conflict and War

16 hours ago

Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to Sky News's Stuart Ramsay. (Sky News)

In short:

Volodymyr Zelensky has said for the first time he would be willing to cede territory to Russia to end the war in his country.

He said he would do it in exchange for NATO membership.

What's next?

NATO has declared Ukraine will join the alliance but has not issued a formal invitation or set a timeline.

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested for the first time he would be willing to give up Ukrainian territory to Russia in exchange for NATO membership — a deal he says would end the "hot phase" of the 33-month-old war.

The Ukrainian president told UK-based Sky News the NATO membership invitation would have to be officially extended to the entire country as Ukraine had no legal right to recognise any of its territory as Russian.

However, he said the NATO membership could then initially apply to only the part of Ukraine that Kyiv controlled.

He told the program a ceasefire was needed to "guarantee that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not come back" to take more Ukrainian territory.

"No-one has offered us to be in NATO for one part or another part of Ukraine," he said.

"The fact is, it is a solution to stop the hot stage of the war because we can just give NATO membership to the part of Ukraine that is under our control.

"But the invitation must be given to Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders … That's what we need to do fast and then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically."

Mr Zelenskyy had previously maintained that Ukraine would not cede any parts of the territory to Russia, including the annexed region of Crimea which Russia claimed in 2014.

News Explained

Where is Crimea?

Crimea is a peninsula which was illegally annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. It splits the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. The 19km-long Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia was opened four years later.

Renewed push to join alliance

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has urged his NATO counterparts to issue an invitation to Kyiv to join the Western military alliance during a meeting in Brussels next week, according to the text of a letter seen by Reuters.

The letter reflects Ukraine's renewed push to secure an invitation to join NATO, which is part of a "victory plan" Mr Zelenskyy outlined last month.

Andrii Sybiha says Ukraine's membership in NATO is inevitable. (Reuters: Remo Casilli/File )

Ukraine says it accepts that it cannot join the alliance until the war is over but extending an invitation now would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that he could not achieve one of his main goals — preventing Kyiv from becoming a NATO member.

"The invitation should not be seen as an escalation," Mr Sybiha wrote in the letter.

"On the contrary, with a clear understanding that Ukraine's membership in NATO is inevitable, Russia will lose one of its main arguments for continuing this unjustified war," he wrote.

"I urge you to endorse the decision to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as one of the outcomes of the NATO Foreign Ministerial Meeting on 3-4 December 2024."

No NATO consensus

NATO diplomats say there is no consensus among alliance members to invite Ukraine at this stage. Any such decision would require the consent of all 32 NATO member countries.

NATO has declared that Ukraine will join the alliance and that it is on an "irreversible" path to membership. But it has not issued a formal invitation or set out a timeline.

Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister in charge of NATO affairs, said Kyiv understood that the consensus for an invitation to join NATO was "not yet there" but the letter was meant to send a strong political signal.

What is NATO?

Europe's military alliance

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is open to any European nation that wants to join and can meet the requirements and obligations. Finland entered in April, and Sweden is on the cusp of joining. The Soviet Union and Russia have been NATO's major focus since it was founded in 1949, and remain its reason for being.

"We have sent a message to the allies that invitation is not off the table regardless of different manipulations and speculations around that," she told Reuters.

In his letter, Mr Sybiha argued an invitation would be the right response "to Russia's constant escalation of the war it has unleashed, the latest demonstration of which is the involvement of tens of thousands of North Korean troops and the use of Ukraine as a testing ground for new weapons".

In recent days, however, diplomats have said they do not see any changes of stance among NATO countries, particularly as they await the Ukraine policy of the United States — the alliance's dominant power — under the incoming administration of president-elect Donald Trump.

Russia drones attack Kyiv, Odessa

Residential buildings have been damaged in Russia's recent attacks.  (Reuters: Alexander Ermochenko)

Meanwhile, overnight, Russian drone attacks on Ukraine injured at least eight people and damaged residential buildings in Kyiv and in the southern Odesa region.

Ukraine's air force said in a statement that, of 132 drones launched against the country overnight, it downed 88, while 41 were "lost", likely due to electronic warfare, and one returned to Russian territory.

Russia has stepped up its nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian cities during its push along the eastern front line, making some of its largest monthly territorial gains since 2022.

It launched a record-high number of 188 drones against the country on Tuesday before staging a large-scale attack on Ukraine's power grid on Thursday.

The drone attack on the southern region of Odesa damaged 13 residential buildings and injured seven people, the national police said in a statement.

Russia has recently been stepping up its drone attacks against Ukraine.  (Reuters: Nina Liashonok)

Fragments from downed Russian drones struck buildings in two Kyiv districts and injured one person late on Thursday, officials said.

Emergency services, in a post on the Telegram messaging app, showed pictures of rubble strewn about inside and outside a paediatric clinic in Kyiv's Dniprovskyi district on the east bank of the Dnipro River.

A security guard at the facility was taken to hospital. Adjacent buildings also suffered damage.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said drone fragments struck an infrastructure site in the Sviatoshynskyi district on the west bank of the river.

Kyiv Regional Governor Ruslan Kravchenko reported minor damage to a private residence and another building without any casualties.

Reuters