An Oct. 4 article in the City of London daily, Financial Times claims that some in the West are coming along to the idea that Ukraine must cede territory to Russia as a means to end the war. “Western diplomats and increasingly Ukrainian officials have come round to the view that meaningful security guarantees could form the basis of a negotiated settlement in which Russian retains de facto, but not de jure, control of all or part of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies,” the article explains.
It adds that the currently Russian-occupied lands in Eastern Ukraine could be returned “through diplomatic means in the future,” if it is accepted that they are lost for now. In return for this, an accelerated path to join NATO would be offered to Ukraine, an option they say may be the “only game in town,” as a Western diplomat told FT.
The article then discusses that there are various different opinions in the West as to how to provide Ukraine a “path” to join NATO, with the obvious issue being NATO’s Article 5, which includes the clause that whenever one member is attacked, all other NATO members must come to its defense, and for a country like Ukraine that is currently at war, or has portions of its territory “occupied” by Russia, this poses a problem. However, according to outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “There are ways of solving that.” He told an FT reporter in an interview last week: “You need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” he said.
