Roving Periscope: Ukraine seeks 50 years of US security against Russia
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In their Sunday meeting in yet another attempt to thrash out a peace plan, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his US counterpart Donald Trump to provide 50 years of security guarantees, saying meeting with Russia to end the ongoing war is still possible.
The current 20-point peace plan, floated by Trump, envisaged guarantees only for 15 years, he said, adding he plans to meet with European leaders in the coming days to discuss the proposals.
According to media reports, Zelenskyy said on Monday that he has asked for up to 50 years’ worth of security guarantees for Ukraine during his meeting with US President Donald Trump over the weekend.
Commenting on his talks with Trump in Florida on Sunday, Zelenskyy told journalists that he said a meeting with Russia would only be possible after the US President and European leaders agree on a framework peace deal for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy stated that he had asked for security guarantees for up to 50 years for Ukraine, but that the current 20-point peace plan envisaged guarantees — aimed at deterring future Russian aggression — only for 15 years.
Any peace plan should be put to the Ukrainian people in a referendum, he added, noting that any vote to approve or reject the agreement should be held during the proposed 60-day ceasefire. “Russia clearly does not want a ceasefire for now,” after several days of heavy drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, he said.
Ukraine’s comments come after Zelenskyy’s talks with Trump at the latter’s Florida residence Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, where the US President said the discussions had gone well but acknowledged that “one or two very thorny issues” remained.
“I do think we’re getting a lot closer, maybe very close,” Trump told reporters after emerging from the talks.
Zelenskyy described the talks as a “really great discussion” in which security guarantees were “100% agreed” upon, but Trump gave a slightly lower estimate—90 or 95 percent—when asked about that part of the proposal.
When asked what issues remain unresolved, Trump said it was about “the land.”
“Some of that land has been taken,” he said. “Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months, and you are better off making a deal now.”
Moscow has demanded that Ukraine cede the eastern Donbas region to Russia and has rejected security guarantees for Kyiv so far. For its part, Ukraine has repeatedly rejected calls for the Donbas, which is now mostly occupied by Russian forces, to be handed to Moscow.
It’s unclear whether Zelenskyy would meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin if a peace agreement was agreed in principle, with both leaders vehemently refusing to meet in the past.
When asked to comment on the U.S.-Ukraine talks which followed that call, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday, “We don’t know how they went. We can’t judge. After these talks, the two presidents — I mean the President of Russia and the President of the United States — agreed to have a phone call again. Then we’ll get the information.”
