- The Ukrainian leader recalled that Kiev insisted on international security guarantees and had drafted a corresponding document
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that it was time to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but Kiev will not sign Minsk 3 agreements.
“I am convinced that now is the time when hostilities must and can be stopped,” he said, speaking via video link to the participants of the G20 summit.
Zelensky added that Ukraine would not agree to sign agreements similar to Minsk-3.
According to him, Kiev has its own plan to “implement the peace formula,” which consists of ten points. Among them are ensuring nuclear, food and energy security, an exchange of prisoners of war according to the “all for all” formula, and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Zelensky recalled that Kiev insisted on international security guarantees and had drafted a corresponding document.
He called on the G20 participants to “cement key element of the postwar security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space”, adding that the main outcome, according to Kiev’s notion, should be the signing of a “Kiev security treaty.”
The Ukrainian leader said Kiev is ready to hold this event at any time, “even this year.”
The Ukrainian president also recalled that Kiev wanted to achieve an international mechanism to compensate Ukraine for its losses from the hostilities at the expense of Russian assets.
Minsk agreements and ‘Kiev pact’
The Minsk agreements reached in 2015 were supposed to be the basis for a settlement in Donbass. However, for years, Kiev stonewalled the peace process and refused to implement the agreements reached, and then declared the political part of this pact unacceptable, as well as its categorical refusal to engage in direct dialogue with the Donbass republics.
In May, Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office Andrey Yermak announced that Kiev, together with former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, had created an international advisory group to hammer out a proposal on security guarantees for Ukraine.
In mid-September, the Ukrainian president’s office published the draft recommendations for a ‘Kiev security treaty’. Contrary to earlier proposals, this document neither envisages Kiev’s neutral status nor any rejection of joining NATO, nor Russia’s participation as a guarantor of the country’s security, but guarantor countries were invited to conclude a binding agreement.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed in this connection that an attempt by an international advisory group on Ukraine with the participation of Rasmussen to “cobble together some guarantees” in a narrow circle and present them to Russia would be a dead end.
First published in TASS