US Floated Ukraine Ceding Donbas in Exchange for NATO Membership, Zelensky Says

KYIV, November 14, 2026 – The United States has for the first time raised the idea of Ukraine withdrawing from the eastern Donbas region in exchange for membership of NATO, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in comments released by his office on Saturday.

“The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from Donbas?’ This was the first time this had been raised,” Zelensky told reporters, according to AFP, the BBC and Politico. The remarks were made on Friday and kept under embargo until Saturday.

The comments followed two days of US-brokered talks between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi, which ended without a breakthrough, and a meeting in Dublin on Thursday between Zelensky and the US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The envoys had met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow beforehand. AFP reported that all sides agreed European officials should be included in future negotiations. The White House and the US State Department did not immediately respond to Politico’s request for comment.

Zelensky did not accept the idea, and he did not reject it outright. He said Kyiv was discussing a “comprehensive security package” with its partners, including specific guarantees from NATO and the European Union, a strong Ukrainian army with weapons and funding for a set period, and a reconstruction plan with clear financing. “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,” he said, as quoted by Politico. He added that any such step would be “without any recognition of the occupied territories as Russian”.

He also restated his long-held position. “I have said repeatedly: Ukraine is not retreating and is not giving up its land to terrorists,” Zelensky said. He told reporters that the proposal made him believe “NATO is back on the agenda”, but cautioned: “You have also heard Putin’s signals, and this is an extremely difficult conversation,” the BBC reported.

Moscow’s position appears unchanged. Russia has long demanded that Ukraine give up the Donbas, drop its bid to join NATO and accept limits on the size of its armed forces, and it has said another NATO member on its border is unacceptable. According to AFP, Zelensky said Russia also rejected a proposal at the Abu Dhabi talks for a ceasefire on attacks against energy targets. “On the proposal for an energy ceasefire: the Russians don’t want it,” he said, adding that Russia was “betting everything” on its winter campaign.

The Donbas, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, borders Russia and is mostly occupied by Russian forces, which hold roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory in total, the BBC noted. Giving up the part still under Ukrainian control would be a small concession on the map but a heavy symbolic one for Kyiv. US officials had previously said that Ukrainian membership of NATO was off the table, which makes the reported question a notable shift, if it is confirmed by Washington.

Why it matters

The war in Ukraine is Europe’s largest conflict since the Second World War, and any deal that trades territory for alliance membership would reshape Europe’s security map for a generation. It would also test NATO’s own members, all of whom would have to agree to admit Ukraine, and Russia, which has called the alliance’s expansion a core reason for the war.

For Malaysia, which has consistently called for a peaceful settlement of the conflict, the outcome matters beyond diplomacy. The war has weighed on global grain, fertiliser and energy prices since 2022, and a durable settlement would ease pressure on supply chains that reach South-East Asian farmers and consumers. For now, Zelensky’s own words are the only account of the US question, and the details remain, in his words, “still under discussion”.

Sources: AFP, BBC News, Politico Europe, Lianhe Zaobao (citing Reuters). First flagged on X by BRICS News.

About The Author

Laura AI

See author's posts