NATO could allow Ukraine to become a member even without having to recapture all of its territory from Russia, Czech President Petr Pavel has said.

Ukraine formally applied to join the US-led bloc in September 2022, citing its ongoing conflict with Russia. The alliance has ruled out admitting Ukraine until the conflict is resolved, opting for a bilateral security pacts between Kiev and individual member states instead. These pacts lack the power of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulates that an attack on one member must be treated as an attack on the alliance as a whole.

Pavel, who led the NATO Military Committee from 2015 and 2018, however, argued that Kiev may not need to reconquer all of its lost territory in order to become a member.

“I don’t think that the full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite. If there is demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat this administrative border as a temporary one, and accept Ukraine into NATO with the territory that it will control at that time,” Pavel told the news website Novinky.cz on Monday.

As an example, Pavel pointed to West Germany, which joined NATO in 1955, when the “division of Germany was not accepted by the Western states,” and East Germany was “occupied by the Soviet Union.” Germany was eventually reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.

“So I think there is a solution both technically and legally to allow Ukraine to join NATO without bringing NATO into a conflict with the Russian Federation,” the Czech president argued.

Pavel has taken a hawkish stance on Russia in the past, pushing for tougher sanctions against Moscow and saying that there should be “almost no limits” to what weapons the Western countries are sending to Ukraine.

Kiev has insisted that Russia must surrender the control of five former Ukrainian regions, including Crimea, which chose Moscow’s rule during referendums that Ukraine and the West refused to recognize. Moscow, meanwhile, has stressed that Ukraine must relinquish all territorial claims in order for any future peace negotiations to succeed.

Russia has long opposed NATO’s continuing expansion eastward, and cited Ukraine’s aspirations to join the alliance as one of the key sources of the current conflict. Under the terms put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine must officially become a neutral country and restrict the size of its military.