Zelensky offers to drop Nato bid for security guarantees

Berlin: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join Nato in exchange for Western security guarantees, but rejected the US push for ceding territory to Russia as he held talks with US envoys on ending the war.

Zelensky sat down with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Zelensky posted pictures of the negotiating table with German chancellor Friedrich Merz sitting next to him.

Responding to journalists’ questions, Zelensky said that since the US and some European nations had rejected Ukraine’s push to join Nato, Kyiv expects the West to offer a set of guarantees similar to those offered to the alliance members. “These security guarantees are an opportunity to prevent another wave of Russian aggression,” he said. “And this is already a compromise on our part.”

Zelensky said that the US had floated an idea for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donetsk and create a demilitarised free economic zone there, a proposal he rejected as unworkable. “I do not consider this fair, because who will manage this economic zone?” he said. “If we are talking about some buffer zone along the line of contact and we believe that only a police mission should be there and troops should withdraw, then the question is simple. If Ukrainian troops withdraw 5–10 kilometers, for example, then why do Russian troops not withdraw by the same distance?”

However, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told the business daily Kommersant that Russian police and national guard would stay in parts of the Donetsk region even if they become a demilitarised zone. Ushakov warned that a search for compromise could take a long time, noting that the US plan had been “worsened” by alterations proposed by Kyiv.