The Kyiv government sees the talks as an interim stage pending its accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance…reports Asian Lite News
Kyiv and Washington started talks on Thursday aimed at providing security guarantees for Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff said, a follow-up to pledges by G7 countries at last month’s NATO summit.
Ukraine was told that the Group of Seven (G7) would draw up and honor security guarantees and help bolster its military in light of Russia’s 17-month-old invasion of Ukraine.
The Kyiv government sees the talks as an interim stage pending its accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance. At the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, NATO leaders offered support to Ukraine but ruled out any notion of membership until the war with Russia is resolved.
Presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the agreement reached in Vilnius was “the basis for working out corresponding bilateral agreements.”
“It is symbolic that the United States — our biggest strategic partner — became the first country with which Ukraine has started this process,” Yermak wrote. “Through this process we will create a successful model for other partners.”
Members of the G7 agreed for each nation to negotiate agreements.
Yermak restated Ukraine’s position that guarantees “will strengthen Ukraine along the path to future membership of the Euro-Atlantic community, including NATO and the European Union.”
Yermak did not say where the talks were taking place or who was taking part, but a photo accompanying his post showed him sitting at a table at what appeared to be the Ukrainian president’s office in the capital Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Ukraine and its allies rallied global support on Thursday for a peace blueprint that will be discussed in talks hosted by Saudi Arabia in Jeddah this weekend.
Diplomats hope the meeting on August 5 and 6 of national security advisers and other senior officials from about 40 countries will agree on key principles to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Ukrainian diplomats in a speech published on the president’s website that the initiative would be a stepping stone toward a peace summit of world leaders this autumn to endorse the principles based on his own 10-point formula for a peace settlement.
“We are working on making it happen this fall,” he said. “Autumn is very soon, but there is still time to prepare for the summit and involve most of the world’s countries.”
There is no prospect of direct peace talks between Ukraine and Russia at the moment, as the war continues to rage and Kyiv seeks to reclaim territory through a counter-offensive. Instead, Ukraine aims to first build a bigger coalition of diplomatic support for its vision of peace beyond its core group of Western backers by involving Global South countries such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Turkiye.
“One of the main aims of this round of negotiations will be to finally fix a common understanding of what the 10 points are about,” Ihor Zhovkva, Zelensky’s chief diplomatic adviser, said on Thursday.
The 10 points include calls for the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a full withdrawal of Russian troops, the protection of food and energy supplies, nuclear safety and the release of all prisoners.