Ukraine used the NATO summit in Ankara to send a signal toward Moscow. Its foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said on Tuesday that Kyiv is ready for an "unconditional ceasefire" with Russia, while insisting that no durable peace is possible without the United States at the table.
"We are prepared for an unconditional ceasefire. We will never stand in the way of peace," Sybiha said at a panel on the summit's sidelines. "We want peace, and we have practical proposals to achieve it." Any settlement, he argued, should carry legally binding bilateral security guarantees from Washington.
If a peace were broken again, Sybiha said, Ukraine would need military support on the ground, a path toward European Union membership, and armed forces strong enough to deter another attack. The remarks came at a session pointedly titled "Ukraine as a Security Provider for Europe," the framing Kyiv has pressed as it argues that its war is the continent's own.
The Dutch and Swedish foreign ministers on the panel picked up the thread. The Netherlands' Tom Berendsen said his country was raising defense spending out of its own need, not at Washington's request, and that "Russia remains a major threat to Europe and NATO. That is why Ukraine's fight is our fight." Sweden's Maria Malmer Stenergard said allied support was still not enough, noting that the Nordic countries had supplied a third of NATO's aid to Ukraine. "If other countries had contributed as much as we have, the war would already be over," she said.
The venue was not incidental. Türkiye has spent the war as one of the few capitals talking to both sides, hosting the 2022 Istanbul talks and pressing since to revive them, and Ankara is where Trump is meeting Zelenskyy this week. A Ukrainian offer of an unconditional ceasefire, delivered from the Turkish capital as the alliance gathers, lands in exactly the room Türkiye has worked to become.
Kyiv has voiced this readiness before. As far back as April 2025, France24, citing AFP, reported that after a meeting in Rome with Zelenskyy, Britain's Keir Starmer and Trump, France's Emmanuel Macron said Ukraine was ready for an "unconditional ceasefire." Unilateral and US-brokered pauses since then did not hold. Sybiha's remarks in Ankara, reported by Anadolu Ajansı from the panel, restate a position Ukraine has held rather than break new ground.
Whether Moscow answers is another matter. Russia has tied any talks to its own conditions, and by Tuesday evening had not responded to Sybiha's offer. What is said in Ankara this week will be measured against what changes on the front line, and against whether Washington, now signaling its own thaw with Türkiye, decides to push.