Kiev officials are seeking to narrow “wide differences” with the president-elect’s transition team during meetings in Washington
US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is holding high-level talks with Ukrainian officials in Washington but NATO membership for Kiev is unlikely to be on the table, the Wall Street Journal has reported.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s closest adviser Andrey Yermak met on Wednesday with Trump’s choice as special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, as well as incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz.
While Kellogg has publicly expressed support for the Biden administration’s move to rush more weapons to Ukraine, believing it will give Trump “leverage” in future talks with Moscow, there has been little appetite among the president-elect’s team to offer Ukraine NATO membership, the paper said.
“The Trump team has shown little interest in offering Ukraine membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” the outlet wrote, noting that Zelensky still considers this a “vital security guarantee.”
Last week, a statement from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry insisted that membership in the military bloc was “the only real security guarantee” for the country and that Kiev would not accept “any alternatives, surrogates or substitutes” for full membership.
During his election campaign, Trump frequently promised he would end the Ukraine conflict within “24 hours,” but offered few details on how he would accomplish this.
This week, however, Reuters reported that his advisers have now mapped out three possible plans to end the conflict, and all of them include Kiev ceding territory to Moscow and giving up on its aspiration to join NATO.
According to WSJ’s report, Yermak traveled to Washington ready to communicate Ukraine’s “readiness for peace.” However, one person familiar with Kiev’s position told the outlet that it must be a “sustainable peace” and that a “temporary” arrangement will not serve US or Ukrainian interests.
Lucian Kim, a Ukraine analyst at International Crisis Group, told the outlet that Kiev might already recognize that NATO membership is not “right around the corner” but suggested that it may not make sense for them to concede this “before negotiations have even started.”
On Thursday, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Ryabkov told CNN that Moscow remains open to hearing Trump’s plans, but has not received any concrete proposals. He warned, however, that under no circumstances would Russia compromise on its core national interests.
He also cautioned that the chances for compromise with Ukraine are currently “zero” and that this won’t change until “people in Kiev begin to understand there’s no way Russia will go the way they’ve suggested.”
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