The US asked if Ukraine would give up Donbas for a seat in NATO, Zelenskyy says, and he says only Ukrainians could answer

Ukraine’s president says Washington has, for the first time, put NATO membership and the Donbas on the same table.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters that US negotiators had asked what would happen if Ukraine joined NATO, and whether Ukraine would then withdraw from Donbas, the eastern region Russia has fought for since 2014 and still does not fully control. His office released the remarks on Saturday, 14 November.

“This was the first time this had been raised,” he said. In his view, it means “NATO is back on the agenda”.

He was careful about what it is not. He said no specific proposal existed yet, that “specifics are needed”, and that Ukraine would never legally recognise occupied territory as Russian.

What would Zelenskyy want in return?

A package, not a promise. He listed NATO membership, binding security guarantees he described as a baseline equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defence clause, guaranteed troop numbers and weapons for Ukraine’s army, and reconstruction money with clear sources.

If the US and other NATO members confirmed something concrete along those lines, he said, he would ask Ukrainians whether to accept it. He said he did not have the right to decide that alone. He has spoken of putting the question to a referendum.

Who asked, and where did it come from?

Zelenskyy did not name which US official raised it. The US envoys handling the talks, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met Zelenskyy near Dublin on Thursday, after the second round of US-brokered talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November. The two envoys also briefed Vladimir Putin in person at the Kremlin.

Zelenskyy said he told the Americans that Putin could not be trusted.

Why is this a turn?

Because NATO membership for Ukraine had been treated as off the table in these talks. Only days ago, Zelenskyy described a US idea of discussing Donbas in exchange for NATO-like guarantees, without a seat in the alliance. Putting membership itself in the frame changes what Ukraine could get for land it has defended for more than a decade.

It also collides with Moscow’s oldest demand. The Kremlin has long said Ukraine must stay out of NATO, and Zelenskyy himself said Putin’s signals showed “an extremely difficult conversation” lay ahead.

What else is moving?

Europe is pushing its way into the room. The European Council’s president, António Costa, has named Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Poland, plus the EU’s institutions, to speak for Europe in any talks, and Kushner has said Russia agreed to European involvement. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejected Russia’s call to discuss a new European security order, saying one already exists in NATO, while EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said a ceasefire must come first.

On the ground, the war has not paused. Ukraine fired close to 1,200 drones at Russia overnight from Thursday into Friday, one of its largest aerial attacks of the war; Russia’s defence ministry said it downed 1,198, and local officials said strikes in three Russian regions killed seven people. A Russian strike on Zaporizhzhia on Friday hit two apartment blocks and wounded 30 people, including six children, and attacks on the power grid caused outages across about half of Ukraine’s regions.

VNN will update this story as more is confirmed.