Ukraine Rejects NATO Official’s Idea to Cede Land for Alliance Membership
Kyiv has insisted that it will not stop fighting until every Russian troop is out of the country
In a rare glimpse of sanity, a top NATO official on Tuesday floated a possible peace proposal that included Ukraine ceding territory to Russia for Moscow’s understanding that its neighbor will join the Alliance.
Stian Jenssen, the NATO chief of staff, told Verdens Gang, a Norwegian paper, that he believes ceding land to Russia could be a “possible solution.”
He told the paper that he was not necessarily endorsing such an idea and said it should be up to the Ukrainians to determine what they see as an acceptable outcome.
Given by the response to his remarks from Kyiv, it seems more war is certain.
Mykhailo Podoliak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's top adviser, took to X to throw cold water on the idea.
“Trading territory for a NATO umbrella? It is ridiculous. That means deliberately choosing the defeat of democracy, encouraging a global criminal, preserving the Russian regime, destroying international law, and passing the war on to other generations,” he said.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive has been stopped by deeply entrenched Russian forces and Kyiv has little to show for its effort since 4 June. RT, the Russian news outlet, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, reported that Ukraine has lost 43,000 men and about 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment since the start of the counteroffensive.
AntiWar.com reported that Jenssen’s comments “mark the first time that a high-level NATO official suggested Ukraine might have to cede territory to Russia.”
TRENDPOST: Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who was banned on YouTube, said in a recent interview that Ukraine insists that it wants Crimea back, which he said is suicidal for the West because Russia will go nuclear before ceding the strategic peninsula.
There is an overwhelming lack of understanding in the West about the history between Ukraine and Russia.
In the print-news world, “nut graphs” are statements of fact that explain a story’s news value and provide historical context. And in mainstream media in print and on the air, a familiar nut graph is repeated over and over… Russia invaded Crimea in the winter of 2014, and annexed it.
Russia did not attack Crimea. And it would likely still be a part of Ukraine if the U.S. had not orchestrated a coup to overthrow the government of the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.
No, Russia did not invade Crimea. The Russian military already had a presence there. Under a lease agreement (which doesn’t expire until 2047), negotiated when Russia granted independence to Ukraine, its Black Sea Fleet is based at Sevastopol port in Crimea.
However, Putin did order more troops into Crimea as he feared the government takeover in Kyiv would provoke an attack.
It was Crimeans who voted overwhelmingly—by 95 percent—to rejoin Russia.
Crimea had been part of Ukraine only since 1954, when then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, designated it as such. In fact, Crimea has been part of Russia longer than the United States has been a country.