Zelenskyy Drops NATO Bid for Security Guarantees but Rejects Ceding Land

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Ukraine is willing to give up its bid to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees, but he rejected a U.S. push for Ukraine to cede land to Russia, according to CBS News and NBC News. He spoke as he sat down in Berlin with President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at his side.

The shift is notable: NBC said Ukraine has fought to join NATO as a safeguard and has the aim written into its constitution, and that dropping it meets one of Russia’s stated war aims. “From the very beginning, Ukraine’s desire was to join NATO, these are real security guarantees. Some partners from the U.S. and Europe did not support this direction,” Zelenskyy told reporters in a WhatsApp chat. He said bilateral guarantees from the United States, “Article 5-like,” along with guarantees from European countries, Canada and Japan, are “an opportunity to prevent another Russian invasion,” adding: “And it is already a compromise from our part.”

Territory remains the obstacle. Russian President Vladimir NBC reported that Putin has demanded Ukraine withdraw troops from the roughly 10 percent of the Donbas region Kyiv still controls, a demand Kyiv rejects. Zelenskyy said the U.S. floated a demilitarized free economic zone in Donetsk, which he questioned. “I do not consider this fair, because who will manage this economic zone?” he said, asking why, if Ukrainian troops pulled back 5 to 10 kilometers, Russian troops would not withdraw by the same distance. He said a fair option is to freeze the line of contact: “today a fair possible option is we stand where we stand.”

Moscow signaled little flexibility. Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told the Russian daily Kommersant that Russian police and national guard would remain in parts of Donetsk even if it became a demilitarized zone, and he said the compromise search could take a long time because Ukrainian and European changes had “worsened” the U.S. proposals that took Russian demands into account, CBS reported. He said Moscow would have “very strong objections” to those edits.

Background matters here. Ukraine submitted a 20-point plan to Washington on Wednesday to balance a 28-point U.S.-backed draft widely seen as too favorable to Moscow, NBC reported. Trump has pushed for a deal by Christmas and has signaled his patience is thinning. Russia has kept up attacks: NBC said a large overnight strike on the power grid caused major blackouts in Odesa and the surrounding region on Saturday and cut off-site power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant for the 12th time, according to the U.N. nuclear agency. The European Union also agreed Friday to freeze 210 billion euros of Russian assets indefinitely as it weighs using them to fund Ukraine.

NBC said the EU is weighing using the frozen assets to fund Ukraine.