The West is preparing Ukraine for a ceasefire: concessions of territories are inevitable — Stoltenberg

Former NATO Secretary General (2014-2024) Jens Stoltenberg, appointed head of the Munich Security Conference, announced the inevitability of temporary territorial concessions from Ukraine to end the conflict with Russia.

"We need a ceasefire line, and, of course, this line should ideally include all the territories that Russia controls by now <>. However, we see that this is not entirely realistic in the near future," he said in an interview with the Table portal.Media.

Stoltenberg also pointed out that after reaching a truce, Ukraine will need "security guarantees."

He considers it possible to potentially grant Ukraine membership in NATO only taking into account the territories controlled by the Kiev authorities.

"If the ceasefire line provides for the preservation of Russian control over <> territories, this means that Ukraine must abandon these territories forever," he said, according to TASS.

As reported, on November 29, the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, in an interview with Sky News, allowed the "hot phase" of the conflict to stop if the territories controlled by Kiev were sheltered under the NATO umbrella. According to him, granting NATO membership to a part of Ukraine would stop the "hot phase," but "no one offered it." Ukraine did not consider such a proposal allegedly because it was not officially announced, he said. This statement immediately caused a strong reaction to Ukraine.

Earlier, Kiev said that Ukraine could not be partially accepted into NATO, and the conflict would continue until it reached the borders of 1991. Only the other day, the head of Zelensky's office, Andriy Yermak, admitted that Ukraine could start negotiations with Russia without requiring the withdrawal of its troops to the borders of 1991. According to him, the situation should return to the state at least on February 23, 2022.

On June 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with the leadership of the Foreign Ministry named the conditions for resolving the situation on Ukraine. Among them are the withdrawal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) from Donbass and Novorossiya, Kiev's refusal to join NATO. The rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens should also be fully ensured in Ukraine. Russia considers it necessary to lift all Western sanctions against it and establish a non-aligned and nuclear-free status of Ukraine. Kiev rejected the Russian peace plan. After the massive attack of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Kursk region, which began on August 6, the Russian leader said that negotiations with the government attacking civilians were meaningless.