MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. Ukraine will not enshrine neutral status in its constitution, Vladimir Zelensky told reporters.
"If being neutral means staying out of NATO, then we’re already in that position. But what would safeguard our security in the long term? <...> Enshrining neutrality means changing your country’s constitution, and Ukraine won’t do that," Insider quoted Zelensky as saying.
On October 6, Verkhovna Rada lawmaker Anna Skorokhod submitted a bill to parliament to enshrine Ukraine’s neutral status in the constitution. The bill has yet to be registered because registration requires the votes of 150 lawmakers. Another lawmaker, Alexey Goncharenko, whom Russia has placed on its list of terrorists and extremists, had previously proposed discussing neutral status for Ukraine. He said that to reach a peace settlement, Ukraine needs to make concessions, particularly on dropping its bid to join NATO, the status of the Russian language and the position of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.