BERLIN\/KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky offered to drop Ukraine\u2019s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance as he held five hours of talks with US envoys in Berlin on Sunday to end the war with Russia, with negotiations set to continue on Monday.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff said \u201ca lot of progress was made\u201d as he and Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner met Zelensky in the latest push to end Europe\u2019s bloodiest conflict since World War Two, though full details were not divulged.<\/p>\n
Zelensky\u2019s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said the president would comment on the talks on Monday once they were completed. Officials, Lytvyn said, were considering the draft documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey went on for more than five hours and ended for today with an agreement to resume tomorrow morning,\u201d Lytvyn told reporters in a WhatsApp chat.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the talks, Zelensky offered to drop Ukraine\u2019s goal to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees.<\/p>\n
The move marks a major shift for Ukraine, which has fought to join NATO as a safeguard against Russian attacks and has such an aspiration included in its constitution. It also meets one of Russia\u2019s war aims, although Kyiv has so far held firm against ceding territory to Moscow.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepresentatives held in-depth discussions regarding the 20-point plan for peace, economic agendas, and more. A lot of progress was made, and they will meet again tomorrow morning,\u201d Witkoff said in a post on X.<\/p>\n
The talks were hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who a source said had made brief remarks before leaving the two sides to negotiate. Other European leaders are also due in Germany for talks on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the very beginning, Ukraine\u2019s desire was to join NATO, these are real security guarantees. Some partners from the US and Europe did not support this direction,\u201d Zelensky said in answer to questions from reporters in a WhatsApp chat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThus, today, bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the US, Article 5-like guarantees for us from the US, and security guarantees from European colleagues, as well as other countries \u2014 Canada, Japan \u2014 are an opportunity to prevent another Russian invasion,\u201d Zelensky said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it is already a compromise on our part,\u201d he said, adding the security guarantees should be legally binding.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demanded Ukraine officially renounce its NATO ambitions and withdraw troops from the about 10 percent of Donbas which Kyiv still controls. Moscow has also said Ukraine must be a neutral country and no NATO troops can be stationed in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russian sources said earlier this year that Putin wants a \u201cwritten\u201d pledge by major Western powers not to enlarge the US-led NATO alliance eastwards \u2014 shorthand for formally ruling out membership to Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other former Soviet republics.<\/p>\n
Sending Witkoff, who has led negotiations with Ukraine and Russia on a US peace proposal, appeared to be a signal that Washington saw a chance of progress nearly four years after Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion.<\/p>\n
Under pressure from Trump to sign a peace deal that initially backed Moscow\u2019s demands, Zelensky accused Russia of dragging out the war through deadly bombings of cities and Ukraine\u2019s power and water supplies.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire along the current front lines would be a fair option, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN\/KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky offered to drop Ukraine\u2019s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance as he held five hours of talks with US envoys in Berlin on Sunday to end the war with Russia, with negotiations set to continue on Monday. Trump\u2019s envoy Steve Witkoff said \u201ca lot of progress was made\u201d as he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":91029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91032,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91018\/revisions\/91032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}