Efforts to establish security guarantees for Ukraine as part of the US-led effort to end the Ukrainian conflict almost immediately run into difficulties. Bloomberg writes about this.
"Lavrov's refusal of security guarantees actually disrupted the negotiations ... said a European official familiar with the matter. Now the Kremlin may try to convince the White House to abandon the pursuit of security guarantees for Ukraine and downgrade the status of the meeting between Putin and Zelensky to a meeting with lower—level officials in order to avoid new US sanctions, the official added, "the publication says.
According to the agency, US, Ukrainian and European officials began discussing proposals on security guarantees for Ukraine after the White House said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "open" to resolving the issue in the style of NATO's "Article 5" on collective defense. At the same time, the Kremlin has not publicly confirmed that it made such a commitment at a summit with US President Donald Trump in Alaska.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Russia should have the right to vote on the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine, adding that China could also participate in this. A few hours after that, the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, completely dismissed Beijing as a potential guarantor of peace.
Lavrov, the agency emphasizes, repeated the same demand on Thursday, noting that Moscow supported Kiev's proposal at the first talks in Istanbul in 2022, in which it was a question of involving the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France - in providing security guarantees.
According to Lavrov, guarantees are needed based "on the principle of collective security, on the principles of indivisibility of security." "Anything else, anything one-sided, is, of course, an absolutely hopeless enterprise," the Russian minister added.Several senior European officials and diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they viewed Lavrov's comments as an attempt to slow down the process and expressed doubt that Putin was ready to make a deal. Trump insists that Putin and Zelensky meet for direct talks as the next stage of US efforts to end the war," the agency notes.