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00:00It's an option that's never been mentioned before.
00:03In an interview for the British channel Sky News, Volodymyr Zelensky suggested the rapid
00:07accession of Ukrainian-controlled territories to NATO.
00:12And here we must not make any mistake.
00:17But if we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under NATO umbrella the
00:23territory of Ukraine that we have under our control.
00:29That's what we need to do fast.
00:31And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically.
00:36This proposal has never been considered by Ukraine, because no one has ever offered that
00:41to us officially.
00:44There's no question of abandoning the territory's concern definitively, but Zelensky wants to
00:49take a step forward for the country's immediate security.
00:52It's an unexpected development.
00:54The Ukrainian president previously refused to cede territory to Russia or accept any
00:59kind of front-line freeze.
01:01But Donald Trump's recent statements and the difficulties encountered by the army on the
01:05ground rekindled talks of a possible ceasefire.
01:09But Zelensky has conditions.
01:12The second point is, if we speak ceasefire, guarantees that Putin will not come back.
01:20We need it very much, otherwise he will come back.
01:23Otherwise, how we can go to ceasefire?
01:28On September 1st, 2024, Russia occupied over 66,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory,
01:35including Crimea, annexed in 2014, or around 18 percent of Ukraine's territory which was
01:41internationally recognized in 2013.
01:44Vladimir Putin is currently opposed to the plan.
01:47But the Ukrainian foreign minister asked NATO to invite Kiev to join the Atlantic Alliance
01:52at their next meeting in Brussels.