KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that discussions by Kyiv’s partners on security guarantees for Ukraine should take place at the level of leaders and that President Donald Trump should be involved.
The Ukrainian leader also said Trump should be reminded in the coming days of his self-imposed deadline to decide on new measures against Russia as President Vladimir Putin has failed to commit to a direct meeting with Zelenskiy.
Ukrainian officials are seeking robust commitments from Kyiv’s allies as part of any peace deal to end its war with Russia, now in its fourth year.
Zelenskiy, speaking to reporters in Kyiv, said he expects to continue discussions with European leaders next week on what he described as NATO-like commitments.
“We need the architecture to be clear to everyone,” he said. “Then we want to connect with President Trump during a meeting… and tell him how we see it.”
Zelenskiy also said he would like to see allies ratify any security guarantees through their respective parliaments.
“We want legally binding security guarantees. We don’t want (another) Budapest Memorandum,” he said, referring to a 1994 deal in which Kyiv gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances that proved insufficient to deter Russia.
Ukraine has urged allies including the U.S. to pressure Russia, which has not backed away from what Kyiv and its partners describe as maximalist demands, to come to the negotiating table.
Officials in Kyiv pointed to Russia’s latest missile and drone strikes on Ukraine, which killed at least 23 people in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, as evidence that Moscow was not interested in peace.
Zelenskiy on Friday recalled an earlier statement by Trump that he would give Putin a week or two to agree on a bilateral meeting with the Ukrainian leader before potentially announcing new action against Russia.
“Two weeks will be on Monday. And we will remind everybody,” Zelenskiy said.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Anastasiia Malenko; Writing by Dan PeleschukEditing by Tomasz Janowski, Sharon Singleton and Gareth Jones)
