For nearly four years, the question at the heart of the war in Ukraine has been whether land can buy security. On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that American negotiators have finally asked it out loud.
“The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from Donbas?’ This was the first time this had been raised,” the Ukrainian president told reporters on Friday, in remarks his office released the following day.
It is a startling reversal of American policy. As recently as February 2025, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called Ukrainian NATO membership an unrealistic outcome of any negotiated settlement. Now, according to Zelensky, Washington is testing the idea of trading the alliance’s ultimate prize — membership itself — for the territory Russia has spent the war trying to take.
What exactly was asked?
Who asked, and when? Zelensky said the question came from the American side during the latest round of US-brokered talks. His disclosure followed a week in which US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin in Moscow, then flew to Dublin to brief the Ukrainian president. The Donbas question, he said, was raised after the two-day round of US-mediated talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November, which ended without a breakthrough.
What territory is at stake? The Donbas — the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk — is smaller than the name suggests. Russia already controls about 80% of Donetsk and nearly all of Luhansk, according to estimates published on 11 November by the US-based Institute for the Study of War. What Washington is asking about is the ground Ukrainian soldiers still hold: the fortified towns and the ridge lines that have anchored Kyiv’s defences for a decade.
What did Zelensky answer? He did not agree to anything. Kyiv’s position, he said, is that it will not retreat from its own land — but if the offer is confirmed in writing, he would put it to the Ukrainian people. “If the American side confirms precisely this to us, together with other NATO partners, then I will ask our Ukrainian society what it thinks: do we accept it or not? I have no right to make that decision on my own.”
What does he want first? A comprehensive security package, spelled out in detail: guarantees from NATO and the European Union, a strong Ukrainian army with its funding and weapons assured, and money for reconstruction. He said he had asked for guarantees modelled on Article 5 of the NATO treaty “as an absolute minimum” — and that the US side answered “No” when he asked whether American soldiers would be deployed on Ukrainian soil under such guarantees. “We need specifics, and we don’t have them yet. All of this is still under discussion.”
Any red lines? One, stated plainly: any deal would come “without any recognition of the occupied territories as Russian.”
The problem with the offer
The offer, as described, is not really Washington’s to make. Bringing a new country into NATO requires the unanimous consent of every member state — all 32 of them, each with its own parliament to convince. A single ally can block it, as Turkey and Hungary demonstrated for months over Finland and Sweden. And the treaty says nothing about admitting a country in the middle of a war; doing so would, in effect, bring Article 5 — an attack on one is an attack on all — into play on day one.
There is also the question of who is actually offering. No American official had confirmed or denied the question on the record by Saturday morning. The White House has said nothing about a Donbas-for-NATO exchange. And Mr Putin, who has repeatedly called Ukrainian NATO membership a non-starter and demanded total control of the Donbas alongside permanent Ukrainian neutrality, has not responded to Zelensky’s disclosure.
That leaves the idea where Zelensky left it: raised for the first time, unconfirmed in writing, with no text given to Kyiv and no date for a referendum. But the fact that it was raised at all changes the conversation. NATO membership, which Washington spent the first year of this administration calling unrealistic, is — in Zelensky’s words — “back on the agenda.” The price being discussed is the land Ukraine has refused to surrender for four years. Whether that price is ever formally put to Ukrainians will depend on whether the Americans are willing to write down what, so far, they have only asked about.
Related: Russia and Ukraine talked again in Abu Dhabi this week — and for once, both sides hinted at flexibility — and our Explains piece on whether the ICC can survive Washington’s sanctions.
Source: The North Atlantic Treaty — NATO
