Putin’s demands for peace in Ukraine include a pledge to stop NATO enlargement, Reuters reports

Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented a set of demands to the West in order to end the full-scale war in Ukraine, including a pledge that there will be no enlargement of NATO eastwards, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed Russian sources. If accepted, the agreement would explicitly rule out NATO accession for three countries with a Membership Action Plan (MAP) — Ukraine, Georgia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina — as well as the rest of the South Caucasus.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war, which have picked up speed since the inauguration of President Donald Trump earlier in 2025, have so far failed.

The Reuters report of Putin’s demands, if confirmed by the Kremlin to be true, would likely be the clearest statement from Russia on how it would end its invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, who is likely the deciding factor regarding a peace proposal, has not yet made an official comment.

Nonetheless, as one of the sources said that Putin’s demands also include Kyiv’s full capitulation of the four regions of Ukraine partially occupied by Russia (not including the Crimean peninsula illegally annexed in 2014), it is likely to be a non-starter for Zelenskyi in its current format.

NATO accession has long been one of Georgia’s primary geopolitical goals.

At the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 — just a few months before the August War — NATO leaders promised that Ukraine and Georgia would have a path to membership.

Despite a subsequent change of government, Georgia’s accession to NATO has remained a constitutionally-enshrined goal.

Polls conducted over the intervening years have found that a majority of Georgians would support NATO succession, although significant numbers would also support military neutrality.

NATO declaration cuts reference to Georgia’s membership prospects

The NATO declaration adopted at a Washington summit does not reference Georgia’s path towards membership, as Georgia’s rift with the West continues to deepen. In the declaration adopted on Wednesday, Georgia is mentioned only once, in a call on Russia to ‘withdraw all of its forces from the Republic of Moldova and Georgia, stationed there without their consent’. The 2008 Bucharest and 2018 Brussels Summit Declaration stated that NATO ’welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirat

OC MediaOC Media