Roving Periscope: Ukraine relents, ready for Russia ceasefire if NATO…
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Unsure of how long the West would continue to support Ukraine—particularly after Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration as the 47th US President on January 20, 2025— Kyiv has relented and said it is open to a ceasefire with Moscow if NATO protects the remaining areas of the war-torn country unoccupied so far by Russia.
Earlier, Ukraine had insisted that it would agree to a ceasefire only after Russia vacated the Ukrainian territory it occupied after the invasion in 2022.
The outgoing US President Joe Biden, who is trying for a similar ceasefire in the Middle East before leaving the White House in January, may now have persuaded Kyiv to seek a truce with Moscow.
Recently, he stepped up support to Ukraine and allowed Kyiv to use US weapons deeper into Russia, but it failed to cut much ice and may have forced Ukraine to seek peace.
The fresh moves are intended to strengthen Zelenskyy’s hand in cease-fire talks, which US President Donald Trump is expected to pursue with Russia.
Trump’s well-known statement that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war “in 24 hours,” and the Americans’ rising concerns that their tax money was going to waste in fighting the unnecessary war in Ukraine, has put Kyiv under tremendous pressure to seek an honorable exit.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s comments came in an interview with Sky News broadcast on Friday when asked about a scenario where NATO security guarantees covered only the territory that Kyiv controls now.
The nearly three-year-long war, which began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, is heading for a turning point next year as Russian troops make steady advances from the east, the reports said.
President Zelenskyy suggested he would accept a ceasefire with Russia that left parts of his country occupied in return for NATO security guarantees over the rest, the strongest signal yet that the Ukrainian leader is open to ending the war without regaining all territory.
“If we want to stop the hot stage of war, we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do fast,” Zelenskyy said, according to a translation by Sky News. “And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.
No country has made such a proposal to Ukraine, and it would be difficult to establish NATO protection for only part of a country. Members of NATO have resisted Ukraine’s aspirations to join the Western military alliance anytime soon because its provision for mutual defense would require them to send in their forces to repel any future attacks, presumably from Russia—which they want to avoid at all costs.
The Democrats-run US and Ukraine have long insisted that Russia not be able to keep forces in the country, a stance that’s harder to achieve in the short-term.
