Ukraine could potentially join NATO even if parts of its territory remained occupied by Russia, the alliance’s former Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview on Oct. 4.
One of the main arguments against granting Ukraine membership at the current time is that NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause would immediately draw the alliance into a direct war with Russia.
But speaking to the Financial Times, Stoltenberg suggested there could be ways to get around this if the Ukrainian territory considered part of NATO was “not necessarily the internationally recognized border.”
Even if it doesn’t happen prior to some form of peace agreement or something…that’s an interesting thought. Like, any scenario where the conflict restarts would place Ukraine in a considerably more-favorable position militarily than is the case today. Today, simply by dint of weapons each has available, Russia has much more ability to attack Ukrainian territory than vice versa. But in the event of such a guarantee and Russia restarting conflict with Ukraine in some form, Russia wouldn’t be able to touch a lot of Ukraine’s territory without starting a conflict with NATO, but Ukraine would have a free hand to hit Russia’s territory, with whatever weapons it could obtain.
Doesn’t Russia have defensive pacts of their own, with North Korea and CSTO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization#History
They would undoubtedly claim to be attacked if Ukraine uses weapons in “their” territory the next time around, and at the very least drag Belarus (and NK as an explicit supplier) in with them.
Do they still have CSTO after the Azerbaijan thing?
Probably “CSTO if convenient?”
I can’t find anything about it being officially disbanded, though now that you mention it, Kazakhstan doesn’t really want to deploy troops to take Ukraine, does it?