Volodimir Zelenski. Photo credit: DTS Nachrichtenagentur / Imago Stock & People / Profimedia
Kiev together with its Western allies must accelerate efforts to sketch future security guarantees for Ukraine, Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelenski said on Tuesday, while the Financial Times writes that the United States is willing to provide such guarantees to collect information and monitoring the field. European, Reuters reports.
“We must intensify our work to the maximum and ensure clarity and transparency in everything related to security guarantees,” Zelesnki said, after a meeting in Kiev with the Chief of the British Army, Tony Radakin, writes Agerpres.
According to the Financial Times on Tuesday, the United States said that they are ready to provide, within a security guarantee plan for Ukraine during the post-war period, means of collecting information and monitoring of the battlefield and also to take part in an anti-aircraft defense shield under European command.
Zelenski declared a day ago that he will receive this week from his Western allies “a basic plan on security guarantees” that will be offered to Ukraine in the event of a peace agreement with Russia, although establishing details on these guarantees “requires more time”.
After outlining the general lines of these guarantees, Zelenski explained below, he will consult with the US on the possibility of a direct meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting that the Ukrainian president has been asking for a long time, but is refused or at least timed by the Kremlin leader.
Zelenski announces new meetings with the US about a possible summit with Putin: “I understand from the American side if the Russians are prepared”
After the summit that US President Donald Trump on August 15 with Putin in Alaska, concluded according to some progress to the negotiated resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian war, although there were no concrete results, the White House leader's intention was to be organized a Trilateral Trump-Putin-Zenski summit.
Trump then had at the White House a meeting with Zelenski and a group of European leaders supporters of Ukraine, a meeting that he at one point interrupted to discuss on the phone with Putin, and at the end he announced that he was working on organizing a Putin-Zenski bilateral meeting and only after that would take place.
What conditions does Russia put
But the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that there is still no plan for a potential summit between Putin and Zelenski, as the Ukrainian president refused all compromise proposals that would allow progress in peace negotiations. On his side, Zelenski accuses Russia of doing everything so that such a summit cannot be carried out and asks its Western allies to impose new sanctions against Russia.
Volodimir Zelenski asks for a “strong reaction” from the US if Putin refuses a meeting: “We are ready”
Putin would have asked the summit with Trump for Ukraine to completely retreat from the Donbas region (made up of Donetk and Lagansk provinces) and instead of freezing the rest of the front line, but would have become more flexible than the idea of security guarantees offered to Ukraine, including by the US, but outside NATO and without sending this troops to this ally.
But Zelenski rejects any transfer of territories to Russia, and Ukraine's European supporters still provide all the support if it continues the war and insists on sending troops to this country as a security guarantee, although Russia repeats that such a unfolding is unacceptable.
Requirements placed on the table by Putin for the end of the war, revealed from the Peak of the Kremlin
From the point of view of Moscow, explained the Russian Foreign Minister, an arrangement for security guarantees offered to Ukraine should involve permanent member states in the UN Security Council, respectively, Russia, China, UK and France, possibly other countries, such as Germany or Turkey, but in no case exclusive countries from NATO members.
Trump said on Friday that in about two weeks he should know if possible progress in his attempt to put an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, as he observes a huge hatred between Putin and Zelenski. Trump has promised that he will decide in these two weeks if he imposes “massive sanctions” Russia or if he will simply abandon his mediation attempts between Russia and Ukraine and tell them that “it is your struggle.”
