BERLIN/KYIV, Dec 14 (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy offered to drop Ukraine’s aspirations to join the NATO military alliance as he held five hours of talks with U.S. envoys in Berlin on Sunday to end the war with Russia, with negotiations set to continue on Monday.

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Zelenskiy’s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn said the president would comment on the talks on Monday once they were completed. Officials, Lytvyn said, were considering the draft documents.

“They went on for more than five hours and ended for today with an agreement to resume tomorrow morning,” Lytvyn told reporters in a WhatsApp chat.

Ahead of the talks, Zelenskiy offered to drop Ukraine’s goal to join NATO in exchange for Western security guarantees.

The move marks a major shift for Ukraine, which has fought to join NATO as a safeguard against Russian attacks and has such an aspiration included in its constitution. It also meets one of Russia’s war aims, although Kyiv has so far held firm against ceding territory to Moscow.

“Representatives held in-depth discussions regarding the 20-point plan for peace, economic agendas, and more. A lot of progress was made, and they will meet again tomorrow morning,” Witkoff said in a post on X.

The talks were hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who a source said had made brief remarks before leaving the two sides to negotiate. Other European leaders are also due in Germany for talks on Monday.

“From the very beginning, Ukraine’s desire was to join NATO, these are real security guarantees. Some partners from the U.S. and Europe did not support this direction,” Zelenskiy said in answer to questions from reporters in a WhatsApp chat.

“Thus, today, bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the U.S., Article 5-like guarantees for us from the U.S., and security guarantees from European colleagues, as well as other countries — Canada, Japan — are an opportunity to prevent another Russian invasion,” Zelenskiy said.

“And it is already a compromise on our part,” he said, adding the security guarantees should be legally binding.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demanded Ukraine officially renounce its NATO ambitions and withdraw troops from the about 10% of Donbas which Kyiv still controls. Moscow has also said Ukraine must be a neutral country and no NATO troops can be stationed in Ukraine.

Under pressure from Trump to sign a peace deal that initially backed Moscow’s demands, Zelenskiy accused Russia of dragging out the war through deadly bombings of cities and Ukraine’s power and water supplies.

A ceasefire along the current front lines would be a fair option, he added.

‘CRITICAL MOMENT’

Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said it was a “good sign” Trump had sent his envoys while fielding questions in an interview with the ZDF broadcaster on the suitability of Witkoff and Kushner, two businessmen, as negotiators.

“It’s certainly anything but an ideal setup for such negotiations. That much is clear. But as they say, you can only dance with the people on the dance floor,” Pistorius said.

On the issue of Ukraine’s offer to give up its NATO aspirations in exchange for security guarantees, Pistorius said Ukraine had bitter prior experience of relying on security assurances. Kyiv had in 1994 agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal in exchange for territorial guarantees from the U.S., Russia and Britain.

“Therefore, it remains to be seen to what extent this statement Zelenskiy has now made will actually hold true, and what preconditions must be met,” Pistorius said.

“This concerns territorial issues, commitments from Russia and others,” he said, adding mere security guarantees, especially without significant U.S. involvement, “wouldn’t be worth much.”

Britain, France and Germany have been working to refine the U.S. proposals, which in a draft disclosed last month called for Kyiv to cede more territory, abandon its NATO ambitions and accept limits on its armed forces.

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The rescue operation to extract Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado and transport her to Norway in time to accept her Nobel Peace Prize involved a complex series of complications and various components in land, sea and air.   

The mission, dubbed Operation Golden Dynamite, was spearheaded by Bryan Stern, a U.S. special forces veteran and founder of the Tampa-based Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, which specializes in high-risk rescue missions and evacuations, notably from conflict and disaster zones.

Getting her out of Venezuela, where she is considered a fugitive by President Nicolás Maduro, involved disguises, deception, navigating choppy seas and arranging flight options.

“She’s perceived by the Maduro regime the way we perceived Osama bin Laden, like that,” Stern told Fox News. “That level of manhunt if you will.”

US COVERT TEAM LEADER DESCRIBES ‘DANGEROUS’ MISSION TO RESCUE VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER

Machado has been hiding out in Venezuela since Maduro won a highly disputed election last year and had not been seen in public in months. 

Stern emphasized that the U.S. government was not involved in the operation. 

His team had been building up a presence in the Caribbean, Venezuela and the neighboring island of Aruba in preparation for operations in the South American region.

The biggest challenge, Stern said, was getting Machado out of the country despite her being a well-known figure there. In order to move her from her house to a “beach landing site,” his team reportedly did “all kinds of things designed to create a little bit of confusion.”

“Anything that we could have possibly think of that we thought could hide her face … was employed.” Stern said. “Anything we could think of, her digital signature, her physical signature. On top of that, we did some deception operations on the ground. We made some noise in some places designed to get people to think something was happening that wasn’t.”

VENEZUELAN DISSIDENT MACHADO CREDITS TRUMP FOR ADVANCING FREEDOM MOVEMENT, DEDICATES NOBEL TO HIM

The maritime operation started off rough, Stern recounted. Of the two boats deployed for the mission, the vessel that physically extracted Machado reportedly lost its GPS in the turbulent seas and suffered a mechanical hiccup that delayed the operation. The team was forced to continue into the “dead of night” in “pitch-black darkness,” navigating seas so violent that one of Stern’s seasoned operators reportedly vomited for nine hours straight.

Reaching the rendezvous point added another layer of difficulty. Stern’s boat and Machado’s vessel had to find each other in pitch-black seas while maintaining radio silence to avoid detection, ultimately locating one another by flashlight.

Stern said he had to remain cautious, fearing that the approaching boat could have been a trap set by Venezuelan forces. To confirm it was safe to proceed, his larger vessel circled Machado’s boat and shined lights on the crew. 

After Stern physically pulled Machado onto his boat, he then alerted the rest of the team that Machado was secured: “Jackpot, jackpot, jackpot.”

“Now we are on the run with Maria Corina Machado, the most wanted woman in the Western Hemisphere, on my boat,” he said.

“I have the most wanted person in the Western hemisphere that I’m trying to move around,” Stern said. “Personally, she’s a hero of mine. She’s a hero of mine. I’ve been tracking her for years.”

VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER SAYS COUNTRY AT ‘THRESHOLD OF FREEDOM’ AS NEW MANIFESTO ENVISIONS REGIME CHANGE

Once in international waters, the new concern was avoiding any appearance that they had kidnapped a Venezuelan, which would have given the government any justification to attack.

“They lie. They could have killed us for any reason,” Stern said. “We’re in the middle of the d— ocean and there’s no one around to see the truth … we are scared, we are nervous, we’re on the run and we floor it getting to the rendezvous.”

Stern ordered his boat captain to drive full throttle and not stop for anything, fearing pursuit by the Venezuelan regime.

“My boat guy, I told him I don’t care, I don’t care who comes,” Stern said. “You don’t stop. You do not stop. I don’t care, I don’t care who. You do not stop at all. Let them chase us if they have to. We have got to get to land.”

At some point during the escape, two F-18 fighter jets reportedly flew overhead. Stern described the moment as a potential complication, since they could not determine whether the jets were hostile or friendly, though he noted it was likely not part of a Navy coordination.

“There’s an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean throwing airplanes off every twenty minutes. I don’t know,” Stern said. “I can tell you that nobody in the Navy said, ‘Don’t worry, brother, we sent two F-18s to cover you.’”

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The maritime team successfully delivered Machado to safety. Stern said his team had also prepared for a possible air extraction, but that plan was abandoned after a last-minute change on Machado’s side. Instead, the final flight to Norway was arranged by her personal network using a friend’s private jet, culminating in her safe arrival.

While Grey Bull Rescue has conducted operations in high-threat environments such as Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Haiti, Stern said the extraction of Machado was uniquely challenging, describing it as “overwhelmingly” the most complicated mission in the organization’s 800-mission history.

Jailed former president accused of a plot to provoke military aggression from North to help consolidate his rule.

Prosecutors have indicted former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for insurrection, accusing him of seeking to provoke military aggression from North Korea to help consolidate his power.

Special prosecutor Cho Eun-seok told a briefing on Monday that his team had indicted Yoon, five former cabinet members, and 18 others on insurrection charges, following a six-month probe into his declaration of martial law last year.

“To create justification for declaring martial law, they tried to lure North Korea into mounting an armed aggression, but failed as North Korea did not respond militarily,” Cho said.

Yoon plunged South Korea into a crisis when he declared martial law in December 2024, prompting protesters and lawmakers to swarm parliament to force a vote against the measure.

The decree was quickly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and Yoon was subsequently impeached, removed from office, and jailed.

Martial law plotted for more than a year

Cho, one of three independent counsels appointed by South Korea’s current president, Lee Jae Myung, to investigate the martial law declaration, said Yoon and his supporters in the military had plotted since at least October 2023 to introduce the measure.

The plan involved installing collaborators in key military posts and removing a defence minister who opposed the scheme, Cho said.

The group even held dinner parties to build support for the plan among military leaders, he added.

Cho said Yoon, his Defence Minister Kim Yong Hyun, and Yeo In-hyung, commander of the military’s counterintelligence agency at the time, had directed military activities against North Korea since October 2024, seeking to provoke an aggressive response that would justify the declaration of martial law.

Yoon was indicted last month for ordering drone flights carrying propaganda leaflets into the North to inflame tensions – prompting his successor, Lee, to say earlier this month that he was weighing an apology to Pyongyang.

‘Antistate forces’

Cho said the provocations did not draw the expected reaction from North Korea, most likely because Pyongyang was tied up in supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But Yoon pressed ahead regardless, he said, branding his political opponents – including the liberal-controlled legislature and the then-leader of his own conservative People Power Party – as “anti-state forces” in a bid to justify his actions.

Under South Korean law, insurrection is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.

Yoon, who has been in jail since July following a stint in custody earlier in the year, insists that his martial law declaration was intended to draw public support for his fight against the opposition Democratic Party, which was abusing its control of parliament to cripple the work of the government.

“Yoon declared emergency martial law to monopolise and maintain power by taking control of the legislative and judiciary branches and eliminating his political opponents,” Cho said.