Photo: French President Emmanuel Macron (Getty Images) Author: Karina Levitskaya
Europe is helping Ukraine obtain security guarantees and better conditions for negotiations. French President Emmanuel Macron has identified four key security guarantees.
RBC-Ukraine reports this with reference to Ladepeche.
“We have tried to organise, in the Franco-British format and together with our German friends, support for Ukraine in order to put it in a position to negotiate under better conditions, and also to provide security guarantees, which are a key element of a strong and lasting peace,” the French President stressed.
Macron noted that it was the efforts of Europeans that helped restore dialogue between Ukraine and the United States after the breakdown in relations between American President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to him, this also made it possible to organize a meeting in Jeddah, during which Ukraine supported the American initiative for a 30-day ceasefire.
The President stressed that Europe was in favour of a clearly defined and measurable ceasefire period during which its observance could be monitored.
“Now the pressure, which we can clearly see, falls on Russia, whose position, in the end, has not changed… that is, its readiness to have peace, but peace, in essence, on its terms. I believe that Moscow's refusal and the implicit threats that were voiced testify to the insincerity of Russia's commitment and, in essence, to its unwillingness to carry out real peace work,” the president analyzes.
European leaders, given the experience of the Minsk agreements, which were signed but subsequently violated by Vladimir Putin, must understand that a ceasefire cannot happen solely on Russia’s terms.
Security guarantees for Ukraine
“It is clear that the Ukrainians cannot under any circumstances make territorial concessions and remain without any security guarantees. We have carried out the work that I pledged to do, namely to make security guarantees realistic, with an important meeting that took place in Paris with the participation of all the chiefs of general staff of the European and allied armies,” the president emphasized.
Emmanuel Macron described in detail four main elements of security guarantees for Ukraine:
- Immediate support for Ukraine – in particular through new initiatives for the supply of equipment and the adjustment of supplies in accordance with current needs.
- Creating a format for the Ukrainian army for the future world, which will allow it to resist new Russian offensives.
- The possibility of deploying troops on the basis of a voluntary coalition in Ukraine in the future.
- Strengthening European defence , which is a guarantee of security, as well as additional investments and coordination between armies.
“All of this (the allocation of basic security guarantees for Ukraine, – ed.) made it possible to begin technical work, which will be completed in the coming days, and which should provide quantitative indicators and lists of countries and events for each of these elements,” he noted.
Recall that yesterday, the national security advisers of Germany, Britain and France will visit the United States. They went to Washington for talks with the US President's National Security Adviser Mike Walz.
Earlier, RBC-Ukraine wrote that on March 11, the Ukrainian and American delegations discussed the US initiative to cease fire with Russia. In the end, Kyiv supported it.
As Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga noted, such a step could begin the path to ending the war.
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