Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he could forgo the bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if there are strong security guarantees from the United States and Europe.
According to the Associated Press and Reuters on the 14th, Zelensky, in an online voice Q&A with reporters before arriving in Berlin, Germany, that day to discuss a plan to end the war with the United States and key European countries, said, "From the start, Ukraine's desire to join NATO was because of genuine security guarantees," and "some partners in the United States and Europe did not support this direction."
He said, "For now, bilateral security guarantees from the United States equivalent to NATO's Article 5 (collective defense clause), together with multilateral security guarantees from European countries, Canada and Japan, are a realistic way to prevent Russia from reinvading." He added, "These security guarantees must be legally binding and have the support of the U.S. Congress."
This is seen as presenting a compromise in which, instead of joining NATO, Ukraine would accept Western security guarantees comparable to NATO's collective defense clause.
The U.S. administration of Donald Trump has repeatedly said Ukraine's NATO membership is not possible. Given that Russia is demanding Ukraine scale down its military and is strongly opposed to the deployment of Western troops, assessments say it is unclear whether the Trump administration would agree to security guarantees equivalent to NATO-style Article 5 collective defense.