Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday hailed the United States’ offer of security guarantees as a “historic decision”, a day before his meeting with US President Donald Trump.
This comes after US envoy Steve Witkoff hinted that the US was prepared to commit to security guarantees.
“Security guarantees as a result of our joint work must be truly very practical and provide protection on land, in the air, and at sea, and must also be developed with Europe’s participation,” Zelensky said.
He further called the “coalition of the willing” meeting on Sunday “very useful”. The meeting, held via video conferencing, was attended by a group of Ukraine’s allies, including Britain, France and Germany.
Zelensky said that all parties agreed that state borders must not be changed by force. The Ukrainian president reiterated the resolution of the key issues in the Russia Ukraine conflict in a “trilateral format”, which includes Russia, Ukraine and US.
Trump could offer a NATO-like protection to Ukraine, and Russia is open to the idea, one of his top foreign policy officials told Reuters on Sunday. This comes before the meeting between Trump and Zelensky, who will be joined by the European leaders.
“We were able to win the following concession, that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection,” Witkoff earlier told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. He said that the US can offer an Article 5 protection, adding that it was the first time that Russia had agreed to something like this.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty regards an attack on any one of its 32 member nations as an attack on all. Witkoff hinted that a security guarantee of this scale could be extended to Ukraine in lieu of NATO membership, which Putin has objected to.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had also accompanied Trump to Alaska for the summit with Putin, said in an interview with the CNN that the talks had “made some progress”.
“Ultimately, where this should lead is to a meeting between the three leaders, between Zelensky, Putin and President Trump, where we can finalize, but we got to get this thing closer before we get to that point,” Rubio said.
