The White House Reacted to the Statement by a NATO Official about Ukraine’s Membership without the Occupied Territories

The White House commented on the statements of the Chief of Staff to the NATO Secretary General Stian Jenssen, who admitted Ukraine’s membership in the alliance in exchange for territorial concessions to Russia. This was stated during a briefing by the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby. Kirby denied that there are talks about this scenario of Ukraine’s membership in NATO and called it “wrong”. “It’s wrong. We’ve already talked about trying to find a path to membership. We have publicly said that in the future Ukraine will be a member of NATO. At the Vilnius Summit the Alliance supported this concept and the idea to develop a path for this final membership,” he claimed. Earlier, Jenssen admitted that Ukraine could become a member of the Alliance in exchange for “giving up” part of its territory. However, he emphasized that this decision should be made only by Kyiv. The official soon called his statement a “mistake”. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called such discussions “absolutely unacceptable”, stressing that they play along with Russia.