The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, arrived this Sunday in the German capital Berlin to hold several days of meetings on the peace plan promoted by President Donald Trump to try to end the war with Russia, which will begin in a few hours with a meeting with the American delegation.
“We will focus on the best way to ensure Ukraine’s security because we do not want to repeat the experience of the Budapest Memorandum,” the agreement signed in 1994 that gave post-Soviet Ukraine security guarantees in exchange for the delivery of the nuclear arsenal then installed by Moscow.
The President of Ukraine has always regretted that the nuclear powers that supported the agreement (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China) did not fulfill the promises made in the text when Russia invaded the country in February 2022.
Zelensky said his key negotiators, Security Council Director Rustem Umerov and Chief of the General Staff General Andrii Hnatov, will update him on the latest developments before meeting with the US delegation before meeting Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Zelensky published pictures of the preparatory meeting with his negotiators in X. “There are many important details and we work thoroughly on every point of every design,” he explained. “It is fundamental that all measures that we agree with our partners contribute to ensuring security in practice. Only reliable guarantees can guarantee peace. We trust that our partners will continue to work together constructively,” he emphasized.
ENCOUNTERS WITH EUROPE
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz briefly received President Zelensky as a prelude to another meeting next Monday, where both will discuss the negotiation process and, as the Ukrainian president said, “the basis of peace: a political agreement to end the war” and the guarantee “that Russia will not invade Ukraine again.”
Zelensky also had a telephone conversation this Saturday with French President Emmanuel Macron, who used the telephone conversation to remind his counterpart that his country “stands and will remain alongside Ukraine to build a solid and lasting peace that can guarantee the security and sovereignty of Ukraine and Europe in the long term.”
“I thank all Ukrainian, European and American negotiators who mobilized to achieve this goal,” Macron added.
On the other hand, Russian Presidential Adviser on Foreign Affairs Yuri Ushakov has expressed complete skepticism about the days of talks in the German capital, insisting that Russia will not give up the territories conquered in Ukraine, a position of which the United States is fully aware.
Ushakov recalled that Vitkov had already been “informed about the territorial issue” during his visit to Moscow earlier this month, adding that “the United States not only knows but also understands Russia’s position in this regard.”
In any case, “hardly anything good will come of the meetings in Berlin,” Ushakov added in comments collected by the Russian news agency TASS.
About The Author
