‘This Is Already a Compromise’ – Zelensky Won’t Alter Constitution to Rule Out NATO Membership

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said he sees no need to change the country’s Constitution in order to reverse course and formally disavow its eventual bid for NATO membership.

One of Russia’s primary stated reasons for launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was its concern about the Western alliance’s eastward expansion ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

When meeting with NATO member leaders in Berlin this week, Zelensky said that, because the US and some European countries had put an end to Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, Ukraine would be forced to expect “Article-Five-like assurances” that Russia would not once again push into Ukrainian sovereign territory after an eventual peace deal was signed.

“These security guarantees are an opportunity to prevent another wave of Russian aggression,” Zelensky said. “And this is already a compromise on our part.”

But when asked on Thursday whether amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution were possible, including removing the provision on NATO membership, Zelensky responded:

“To be honest, I do not believe we need to change our country’s Constitution,” he said at a press conference in Brussels. “First of all, this is the Constitution of Ukraine, and it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide what to do with it, not anyone else. Certainly not in response to calls from the Russian Federation or anyone else. This is our Constitution.”

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The president also did not rule out the possibility that Ukraine could join the Alliance well after the Russian troops withdraw from his country.

“Perhaps positions will change in the future. Perhaps someone will realize that a strong Ukrainian army strengthens NATO rather than the other way around. This is a matter of politics. The world is changing. Some people live, some die. That is life,” Zelensky said,

Zelensky also noted that the United States has consistently opposed Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance, but he expressed hope that this position could change.

US President Donald Trump said that the United States was ready to provide Ukraine with security guarantees together with other countries, but not in the form of Ukraine joining NATO.

Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin – whose first term as Russia’s president lasted from 2000-2008, and later, after temporarily loaning the title for constitutional reasons to Dmitry Medvedev for four years, has since ruled Russia since 2012 –long has expressed his worries about NATO’s expansion.

In a famous speech in Munich in 2007, a year before the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine were to be formally invited into the Alliance, Putin said:

“I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe,” he told the assembly, directing his attention in particular to then-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

“On the contrary,” he continued, “it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”