KYIV: An offer of NATO membership to territory under Kyiv’s control would end “the hot stage of the war” in Ukraine, but any proposal to join the military alliance should be extended to all parts of the country that fall under internationally recognized borders, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a broadcast interview.
Zelensky’s remarks on Friday signaled a possible way forward to the difficult path Ukraine faces to future NATO membership. At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership. However, one obstacle to moving forward has been the view that Ukraine’s borders would need to be clearly demarcated before it could join so that there can be no mistaking where the alliance’s pact of mutual defense would come into effect.
“You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country,” the Ukrainian president said in an excerpt of the interview with Sky News, dubbed by the UK broadcaster. “Why? Because thus you would recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other one is Russia.”
Under the Ukrainian constitution, Ukraine cannot recognize territory occupied by Russia as Russian.
“So legally, by law, we have no right to recognize the occupied territory as territory of Russia,” he said.
Since the start of the war in 2022, Russia has been expending huge amounts of weaponry and human life to make small-but-steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls in east and southern Ukraine.
“If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do, fast. And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically,” he said.
An invitation for Ukraine to join NATO is one key point of Zelensky’s “victory plan”, which he presented to Western allies and the Ukrainian people in October. The plan is seen as a way for Ukraine to strengthen its hand in any negotiations with Moscow.
Earlier this week, NATO’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte said that the alliance “needs to go further” to support Ukraine in its fight against a Russian invasion. Military aid to Kyiv and steps toward ending the war are expected to be high on the agenda when NATO members’ foreign ministers meet in Brussels for a two-day gathering starting on December 3.
However, any decision for Ukraine to join the military alliance would require a lengthier process and the agreement of all member states.
There is also uncertainty as to the foreign policy stance of President-elect Donald Trump. While Trump vowed on the campaign trail to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in a single day, he has not publicly discussed how this could happen. Trump also announced Wednesday that Keith Kellogg, an 80-year-old, highly decorated retired three-star general, would serve as his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.
In April, Kellog wrote that “bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong, America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties.”
Meanwhile, during his only campaign debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump twice refused to directly answer a question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war — raising concerns that Kyiv could be forced to accept unfavorable terms in any negotiations.
Zelensky’s statement comes as Ukraine faces increasing pressure along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) frontline. In its latest report, the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said Saturday that Russian forces had recently advanced near Kupiansk, in Toretsk, and near Pokrovsk and Velyka Novosilka, a key logistics route for the Ukrainian military.
Ukraine’s air force announced Saturday that the country had come under attack from ten Russian drones, of which eight were shot down over the Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kherson regions. One drone returned to Russian-occupied territory, while the final drone disappeared from radar, often a sign of the use of electronic defenses.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said that 11 Ukrainian drones had been shot down by the country’s air defense systems. Both the mayor of Sochi, Andrey Proshunin, and the head of Russia’s Dagestan region, Sergey Melikov, both in Russia’s southwest, said that drones had been destroyed in their regions overnight. No casualties were reported.
On Friday, the Ukrainian president announced a number of changes to military leadership, saying that changes in personnel management were needed to improve the situation on the battlefield.
General Mykhailo Drapatyi, who led the defense of Kharkiv during Russia’s new offensive on Ukraine’s second-largest city this year, was appointed the new head of Ukraine’s Ground Forces. Oleh Apostol was named as the new Deputy Commander-in-Chief responsible for improving military training.
Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi also announced Friday that he would bolster units in Donetsk, Pokrovsk and Kurakhove with additional reserves, ammunition, weapons and military equipment.

TBILISI: Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili called the government illegitimate on Saturday and said she would not leave office when her term ends next month, as the prime minister said the state would not allow a revolution to take place.
The South Caucasus country was thrown into crisis on Thursday, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s Georgian Dream party said it was halting European Union accession talks for the next four years over what it called “blackmail” of Georgia by the bloc, abruptly reversing a long-standing national goal.
EU membership is overwhelmingly popular in Georgia and the freezing of application talks triggered large protests in the country, which has the aim of EU membership written into its constitution.
In an address on Saturday, Zourabichvili, a pro-EU critic of Georgian Dream whose powers are mostly ceremonial, said parliament had no right to elect her successor when her term ends in December, and that she would stay in post.
Zourabichvili and other government critics say an Oct. 26 election, in which Georgian Dream won almost 54 percent of the vote, was fraudulent, and that the parliament it elected is illegitimate.
“There is no legitimate parliament, and therefore, an illegitimate parliament cannot elect a new president. Thus, no inauguration can take place, and my mandate continues until a legitimately elected parliament is formed,” she said.
Earlier, Kobakhidze accused opponents of the halt to EU accession of plotting a revolution, along the lines of Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan protest, which ousted a pro-Russian president.
“In Georgia, the Maidan scenario cannot be realized. Georgia is a state, and the state will not, of course, permit this,” Kobakhidze was quoted as saying by local media.
The country’s Interior Ministry said on Saturday it had detained 107 people in the capital, Tbilisi, overnight during a protest which saw demonstrators build barricades along the central Rustaveli Avenue, and throw fireworks at riot police, who used water cannon and tear gas to disperse them.

MORE PROTESTERS GATHER
Many thousands of protesters were gathering on Saturday night in Tbilisi, amid a large presence of riot police.
Hundreds of employees of Georgia’s foreign, defense, justice and education ministries, along with the country’s central bank have signed open letters condemning the decision to freeze talks.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, a star of Georgia’s national soccer team spoke out in favor of the protesters.
“My country hurts, my people hurt — it’s painful and emotional to watch the videos that are circulating, stop the violence and aggression! Georgia deserves Europe today more than ever!” Kvaratskhelia wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
The halt to EU accession caps months of deteriorating relations between Georgian Dream, which has faced allegations of authoritarian and pro-Russian tendencies, and the West.
The party is dominated by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire ex-prime minister who had taken increasingly anti-Western positions in the run-up to the October election.
Both the ruling party and Georgia’s electoral commission say the poll was free and fair. Western countries have called for an investigation into violations.
The EU had already said Georgia’s application was stalled over laws against “foreign agents” and LGBT rights that it has described as draconian and pro-Russian.
Meanwhile, Georgian Dream has moved to build ties with neighboring Russia, from which Georgia gained independence in 1991.
The two countries have no diplomatic ties since a brief war over a Moscow-backed rebel region in 2008, but restored direct flights in 2023, while Moscow lifted visa restrictions on Georgian nationals earlier this year.