Ok, so here’s the headline:

NATO Official Gives Ukraine 'Unacceptable' Conditions for Joining

Then the first sentence:

The chief of staff for NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has angered Kyiv officials for suggesting Ukraine could become a member of NATO if it ceded some of its territory to Russia.

Then the second sentence.

Stian Jenssen, who has held the title of director of the Private Office of the NATO Secretary General since 2017, reportedly made the suggestion while speaking on a recent panel in the Norwegian city of Arendal.

Now we have 3 slightly different versions of the story, but the differences are very important. Which one is the truth? The headline says he gave conditions to Ukraine, the second implies it, and the third clarifies that he was speaking to a Norwegian discussion panel. In Norway, where there may not have even been an Ukrainians present.

WTF, Newsweek?

I get that Ukraine won't consider the possibility of ceding any territory, nor should they. They probably don't like their allies even mentioning it.

But, there's the separate issue of not being able to join NATO with ongoing territorial disputes. Without much context to go on, I would almost interpret this as something more along the lines of "Ukraine could join NATO tomorrow if the dispute went away (by whatever method)".

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Stian Jenssen, who has held the title of director of the Private Office of the NATO Secretary General since 2017, reportedly made the suggestion while speaking on a recent panel in the Norwegian city of Arendal.

Ukrainian territory has been one of the driving forces in the war Russian President Vladimir Putin launched on Ukraine in February 2022.

Mykhailo Podoliak, Zelensky's top adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, denounced Jenssen's suggestion on X, formerly Twitter.

That means deliberately choosing the defeat of democracy, encouraging a global criminal, preserving the Russian regime, destroying international law, and passing the war on to other generations," Podoliak wrote.

A spokesperson for Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also publicly rejected the suggestion, calling Jenssen's proposal "absolutely unacceptable" in a statement posted on Facebook.

The conscious or unconscious participation of NATO officials in shaping the narrative regarding the possibility of Ukraine's giving up its territories plays into the hands of Russia," foreign ministry spokesperson Oleh Nikolenko wrote in part.

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