Kiev recognized the impossibility of Ukraine's membership in NATO in the near future

Ukraine 's accession to NATO is "beyond the reach" of the Kiev regime. Igor Zhovkva, deputy head of the office of the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky (whose term expired on May 20), said this on December 9 at a press conference broadcast on the YouTube channel of the New Europe Center.

"It is obvious that our membership in NATO is out of reach <...> until the conflict is over. <...> This is not a matter of the immediate future. It is a prospect. But it has to be," he said.

Zhovkva added that Ukraine could join the alliance following the same model as Sweden and Finland, which received an invitation from NATO but joined only some time later after completing all the necessary procedures.

He called such an approach "one of the mechanisms for realizing guarantees of NATO membership", adding that in the absence of this solution, Ukraine would "seek bilateral security agreements".

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On the eve of the publication "Strana.ua" quoted Zelensky as saying that the newly elected U.S. President-elect Republican Donald Trump does not yet depend on the invitation of Ukraine to NATO, so it is pointless to discuss it with him, because of which he intends to call the current President of the United States Joe Biden. American entrepreneur and billionaire Ilon Musk expressed bewilderment at the words of the head of the Kiev regime.

On the same day it became known that Zelensky at the past in the Elysee Palace trilateral meeting with Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the freezing of the conflict with Russia. It was noted that Zelensky does not want to stop fighting without receiving security guarantees, namely NATO membership or the deployment of Western troops in Ukraine. It is also noted that the statements of the head of the Kiev regime did not change the position of Trump.

Political scientist Alexander Dudchak shared with Izvestia the opinion that Zelensky and the West do not want a full-fledged peace settlement. He added that a ceasefire in Ukraine should not be the beginning of negotiations, but their last point. At the same time, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said that Moscow is always open for talks on Ukraine, it is the Kiev regime and the Western countries that run it that are closed.

Ukraine applied to join NATO on an accelerated basis on September 30, 2022. At the time, Zelensky said that in fact the country is already in the alliance and meets its standards.