In a long, wide-ranging interview with Sky News, the Ukrainian president was asked whether he would accept Nato membership, but only on the territory that Kyiv currently holds.

Zelensky said he would, but only if Nato membership was offered to the whole of Ukraine, within its internationally recognised borders, first.

Ukraine could then attempt to negotiate the return of territory currently under Russian control “in a diplomatic way”, he said.

But the suggestion is highly theoretical. As Zelensky pointed out, no-one has yet made such an offer.

Whether Nato would ever consider such a move is highly doubtful.

“Ukraine has never considered such a proposal, because no-one has officially offered it to us,” Zelensky said.

Nato would need to offer membership to the whole country, including those parts currently under Russian control, he said.

“You can’t give [an] invitation to just one part of a country,” the president said, according to a translation provided by Sky News. “Why? Because thus, you would recognise that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine, and the other one is Russia.”

Lots of people were proposing ceasefires, he said, but without a mechanism to prevent Russia from attacking again, ceasefires were simply too dangerous.

Only NATO membership, he said, could offer that kind of guarantee.

The Ukrainian president has already said that he thinks the war could end in the coming year if Ukraine’s allies show sufficient resolve.

Reports suggest that discussion of the so-called West German model – Nato membership offered to a divided country – has been going on in Western circles for more than a year.

But no formal proposals have yet been made.

While on the campaign trail, US President-elect Trump vowed to end the war within “24 hours”.

Those around him, like Vice President-elect JD Vance, have signalled that will mean compromises for Ukraine, likely in the form of giving up territory in the Donbas and Crimea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said himself Kyiv would like to end the war through “diplomatic means” in 2025.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has occupied territory in the country’s east.

But It is also worth noting that so far Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has given absolutely no indication that he’s abandoned his desire to subjugate Ukraine entirely.

The idea that he would be willing to allow any part of Ukraine to join Nato is, for now, unthinkable.

All the indications so far suggest that any involvement of Nato is a complete non-starter.

On Thursday, Moscow mounted its second mass attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in less than two weeks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a response to “continued attacks” using US-supplied Atacms missiles on Russian soil.

Having already endured two-and-a-half bitter winters since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainians are bracing themselves for another.

• Russia unleashed its second major attack this month on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, triggering severe power cuts that affected at least one million people across three western regions.
• The attacks cut power to 523,000 consumers in the Lviv region, 215,000 in the Volyn region and 280,000 in the Rivne region, regional governors reported.
• Ukraine’s air force said Russia used 91 missiles and 97 drones in the attack, with 12 hitting their targets, most of which were energy and fuel facilities.
• President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had struck in response to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory with US medium-range ATACMS missiles. He warned future targets could include “decision-making centres” in Kyiv using its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile – which Moscow claims is incapable of being intercepted.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of a “despicable escalation”, saying it had used cruise missiles with cluster munitions in the attack. Zelenskyy said he was speaking to Western leaders – including NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz – to forge a response to the Russian attempt to “drag out the war”.
• US President Joe Biden labelled Moscow’s attack “outrageous”, saying it serves as “another reminder of the urgency and importance of supporting the Ukrainian people in their defence against Russian aggression”.
• Russian air defences destroyed or downed 30 Ukrainian drones in the southern Rostov region early on Friday, Regional Governor Yuri Slyusar said.
• Fragments from downed Russian drones struck buildings in two Kyiv districts and injured one person late on Thursday, officials said.
• Explosions were heard in Odesa on Thursday morning amid reports of a cruise missile attack in the Ukrainian Black Sea port city.
• President Zelenskyy has signed into law Ukraine’s first wartime tax increases, with Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko saying the bill is vital to ensure smooth funding for the Ukrainian defence sector.
• The changes, which will take effect from December 1, will see the war tax on personal income rise from 1.5 percent to 5 percent.
• Ukraine has urged its partners to speed up military aid, saying quicker delivery of critical battlefield equipment is more important than drafting more men, after a senior US administration official urged Kyiv to reduce the conscription age from 25 to 18.
• Ukraine is ready to host a second global summit aimed at ending Russia’s invasion in the “nearest future”, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has said. Ukraine held its first “peace summit” in Switzerland in June.
• France, which is under pressure over its stance claiming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is immune from an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, has declined to say whether it would be prepared to arrest President Putin under a similar warrant.
• Putin said during a news conference in Kazakhstan that Russia would use “precisely all means of destruction available” against Ukraine if Kyiv were to acquire nuclear arms, adding that he would be “watching their every move”.
• Putin added that there were no conditions to start talks with Ukraine on a possible peace settlement, but that terms he set out in June, including Kyiv dropping its NATO ambitions, remained unchanged.
• Germany has offered to re-deploy Patriot air defence missiles to NATO ally Poland at the start of the new year, the German Defence Ministry said.
• A Russian court has sentenced lawyer Dmitry Talantov, who has represented critics of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, to seven years in prison after convicting him of spreading false information about the Russian army and “inciting hatred”.
• Russia and Ukraine have agreed to each return a total of nine children to be reunited with family members, in the latest humanitarian exchange agreed upon following mediation by Qatar.