Publicly, Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, continues to insist that Ukraine will not cede any of its territory to Russia. But, privately, in Kiev, Washington and some European capitals, the realization is firming up that the war will end at the negotiating table, and it will end without Ukraine recapturing its lost territory.
Officials “close to NATO” are “detecting that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy may be getting ready to adopt a more flexible approach as they look at ways to help bring an end to Russia’s war.” The Washington Post reports that “Western diplomats in Kyiv have sensed that Zelensky has become more open to beginning negotiations with Russia.” Ukrainian officials, on condition that they not be named, told Bloomberg that “they’re prepared to recognize that an endgame should come into play.”
Publicly, Zelensky still insists that that endgame must be based on his “Ukrainian Victory Plan.” On October 9, he said that point one of that plan is NATO membership for Ukraine: “The first step of the plan focuses on whether the problem of geopolitical uncertainty in Europe will be resolved – whether Ukraine will get a seat in NATO.”
But if that is the starting point of the plan, then the plan entered the diplomatic world stillborn. The U.S. and some of its more powerful NATO partners are not going to grant Ukraine NATO membership. That may partially explain why the plan received such a tepid reception when it was presented in Washington. On October 9, General Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that there is a lack of unanimity in NATO on the question of admitting Ukraine. “We’re going to have to sit down with the Ukrainians,” he said, “and kind of work through what can you actually do versus what do you have on this list.”
But behind closed doors, there is reportedly talk of a different kind of deal in which Ukraine doesn’t get NATO membership. But part of it does. According to these reports, Ukraine would concede the reality that they cannot regain the territory they have lost without having to formally recognize it. They would withdraw their forces from the lost territory and promise not to attempt to reacquire it militarily while still officially claiming it and holding on to the hope that it can be reacquired diplomatically at some imaginary future point. The remaining 80% of Ukraine would then be welcomed into NATO whose Article 5 would apply only to that territory.
On October 14, a senior Ukrainian official told Der Spiegel that Kiev is considering compromises in which peace is won at the cost of lost territory. Zelensky’s government, he said, “believed that victory must be the unconditional surrender of Putin’s Russia.” But Kiev now recognizes that concessions are going to be necessary. “A deal must also be beneficial for Russia,” the official said.
The NATO charter says that countries that aspire to membership must not be at war, must be committed “to resolve conflicts peacefully,” and cannot have territorial disputes. The new plan would resolve that problem as well as the problem of drawing NATO into an immediate war with Russia if Article 5 were extended into Russian held territory in the east of Ukraine.
The idea may have been first publicly stated by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who wrote in The Spectator that there is a way of getting Ukraine into NATO now. “[W]e could extend the Article 5 security guarantee to all the Ukrainian territory currently controlled by Ukraine,” he said, “while reaffirming the absolute right of the Ukrainians to the whole of their 1991 nation. We could protect most of Ukraine, while simultaneously supporting the Ukrainian right to recapture the rest.”
The idea has also been publicly stated by former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg. “Finland,” he reminded, “fought a brave war against the Soviet Union in ’39… The war ended with them giving up 10 per cent of the territory. But they got a secure border.” Giving up 20% of their land could solve Ukraine’s Article 5 conundrum. “There are ways of solving that,” Stoltenberg said, “If there is a line that is not necessarily the internationally recognized border… But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border.”
The solution seems to solve Ukraine’s Article 5 problem, NATO’s Article 5 problem, and, perhaps, even Russia’s Article 5 problem. Leading up to their invasion of Ukraine, Russia was concerned that a Ukraine in NATO that attacked Donbas or Crimea would draw Russia into a war with NATO. In February 2022, Putin said, “Suppose Ukraine is a NATO member… Suppose it starts operations in Crimea, not to mention Donbass for now. This is sovereign Russian territory… Imagine that Ukraine is a NATO country and starts these military operations. What are we supposed to do? Fight against the NATO bloc? Has anyone given at least some thought to this? Apparently not.”
But there are two roadblocks that seem fatal to the proposal. The first is whether NATO is really prepared to offer security guarantees and NATO membership even to a Ukraine with newly drawn borders. They have been reluctant to do so because they are not secure in the assurance that one of Ukraine or Russia will still not attack the other and trigger an Article 5 war.
The second is that preventing NATO from coming to Ukraine and abutting its western border was the key reason Russia went to war in the first place. And that would not simply change because of a Ukraine that is smaller or a western border that is further west.
Several sources cite Germany after World War 2 as a historical precedent that the dividing of Ukraine could work. The Financial Times says that smaller NATO Article 5 “umbrella” would be “akin to West Germany in the cold war.” Stoltenberg makes the same analogy, saying that “West Germany regarded East Germany as part of the bigger Germany… But NATO was of course only protecting West Germany.”
The difference, though, is that then, unlike Ukraine now, the Soviet Union agreed to let West Germany join NATO, ironically, in exchange for a promise that NATO would expand no further east, including, especially, to Ukraine.
In the essay that may have first introduced the idea, historian Mary Sarotte suggests a further detail to help assuage Russian objections. When Norway – who also shares a border with Russia – joined NATO, they unilaterally promised that they would not “make available for the armed forces of foreign powers bases on Norwegian territory, as long as Norway is not attacked or subject to the threat of attack.” Sarotte suggests that Ukraine could do the same.
But there is a problem here too. It might somewhat assuage Russian concerns that NATO cannot use Ukraine to base its troops or its weapons. When Putin warned of a Ukraine in NATO attacking Crimea, he also warned of a Ukraine “filled with weapons, modern offensive weapons [that] will be deployed on its territory.” But the problem is with the addendum that the prohibition would be nullified if Ukraine was attacked or threatened with attack.
It is part of the Russian consciousness that you can too easily be held responsible for wars that you did not start. In 2008, the West blamed Russia for invading Georgia, though a Georgian invasion of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, that included rockets and artillery attacks, had taken Russia by surprise. New York Times reporting in November of 2008 says that Georgia undertook the massive shelling of Tskhinvali long before any Russian incursion. OSCE officials called the attack “an indiscriminate attack on the town.” The European Union Independent Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia found “there was no Russian military invasion under way, which had to be stopped by Georgian military forces.”
Even the current war, in Russia’s perspective, was a protective response to the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Donbas, the massing of elite Ukrainian troops on the western border of Donbas, and the dramatic increase in Ukrainian artillery shelling into the Donbas. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the UN that Russia’s military operation was “carried out to protect Russians living in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and eliminate threats to Russian security.”
It is very unlikely that Russia will simply trust NATO to interpret the “unless Ukraine is attacked” clause.
It is likely that this war will end with a negotiated settlement. And it is likely that a percentage of Ukrainian territory will be lost. It is also very likely that Ukraine will have to provide a written guarantee that it will return to a commitment of neutrality and forgo NATO membership. But it is quite unlikely that Ukraine will get part of its wish and that NATO will circumvent its Article 5 problem by unofficially redrawing the borders of Ukraine.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
