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Zelenskyy's offer to resign for NATO membership
Summary
A retrospective on 23 February 2025, when Ukraine's president tied his own departure to NATO accession amid pressure from Washington over elections.
What did Volodymyr Zelenskyy mean when he said he was ready to give up the presidency? On 23 February 2025, Ukraine's president said he was "ready" to resign in exchange for NATO accession as part of a potential peace agreement.
The remark came at the end of a week in which the question of his own mandate moved to the centre of the peace diplomacy.
A week of pressure
On 17 February 2025, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said that Europe had no role in any peace negotiations on ending the war in Ukraine.
On 18 February 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump called for a new presidential election to be held in Ukraine as part of a peace deal with Russia. The next day he went further, calling Zelenskyy a "dictator" who had done a "terrible job", and warning that Zelenskyy was "not going to have a country left" soon. The remarks came amid deteriorating relations between Kyiv and Washington.
Also on 19 February 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised high-level talks with the United States in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a "first step" towards restoring full diplomatic ties.
The election question
Presidential elections in Ukraine had been scheduled for March or April 2024. None were held, because Ukrainian law does not allow them while martial law is in effect, and martial law has been in force since 24 February 2022. Parliament has extended it in 90-day intervals. As of the latest extension, which came later, it runs until 31 October 2026.
What the offer linked
Against that backdrop, Zelenskyy's statement of 23 February 2025 connected two issues that had been raised separately: his own place in office and Ukraine's path into NATO. He framed his possible resignation as a trade tied to accession, within a wider peace settlement.
The statement came one day before the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion. It placed the president's future alongside questions that the week's events had made central: who would sit at the negotiating table, whether Europe would have a seat, and whether elections would form part of any deal.
