A senior NATO official has apologised after suggesting that Ukraine could cede territory to Russia in exchange for formal membership of the alliance.
"My statement was part of a larger discussion about possible future scenarios in Ukraine, and I should not have said it that way. It was wrong," Stian Jenssen, the Director of the Private Office of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, told Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang on Wednesday.
Jenssen's apology came after he was quoted by the same newspaper on Tuesday as saying that "one solution may be that Ukraine gives up territory and gets NATO membership in return." This immediately triggered a furious reaction in Kyiv, with senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Mykhailo Podolyak denouncing Jenssen's proposal as "ridiculous".
"Trading territory for a NATO umbrella [...] means deliberately choosing the defeat of democracy, encouraging a global criminal, preserving the Russian regime, destroying international law, and passing the war on to other generations," he said.
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On Thursday, Stoltenberg himself weighed in on the issue to reaffirm the alliance's commitment to Kyiv. "It is the Ukrainians, and only the Ukrainians, who can decide when there are conditions in place for negotiations, and who can decide at the negotiating table what is an acceptable solution," he said, in remarks quoted by Reuters.
However, the NATO leader also suggested that Jenssen's remarks had been misconstrued: "[Jenssen's] message, which is my main message and NATO's main message, is, firstly, that NATO's policy is unchanged – we support Ukraine."
