NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced that over the past few months, 30 countries, including Japan and Australia, have been actively working on creating a system of security guarantees for Ukraine. He stated this during an interview with the American television channel Fox News.
This is reported by Kyiv24
Key coordinators and the position of the USA
According to Rutte, the initiative is led by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. The United States has also joined the process, confirming its readiness to participate in the development of the security guarantees concept for Ukraine. Specific details of these guarantees are expected to be discussed in the coming days.
“What we are discussing here is not NATO membership. What we are discussing here are security guarantees for Ukraine under Article 5. And what exactly they will encompass will now be discussed more specifically,” he said.
Conditions for implementing guarantees and the results of negotiations
Mark Rutte emphasized that the security guarantees will only come into effect after a long-term ceasefire or the conclusion of a full peace agreement. He also noted that the issue of deploying ground troops was not considered during the negotiations in Washington, and he described the meeting at the White House as very successful.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington on August 18, where he held talks with US President Donald Trump. Key European allies also participated in the meetings. According to Zelensky, the issue of security guarantees was one of the main topics during these discussions.
These negotiations took place shortly after talks in Alaska, during which Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump discussed the possibility of ending Russia’s war against Ukraine, but no concrete agreements were reached.
Amid ongoing aggression from the Russian Federation, Ukraine has repeatedly expressed its desire to join NATO or receive reliable security guarantees from the US and European partners. At the same time, Moscow advocates against the alliance’s expansion, demanding the removal of Ukraine’s right to join NATO, while American officials have long been unsupportive of Ukraine’s prospects for membership in the military alliance.