US efforts to establish security guarantees for Ukraine have almost immediately run into difficulties, according to Bloomberg, as reported by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN. The article says that US, Ukrainian, and European representatives have begun discussing proposals for security guarantees for Ukraine after the end of the war, after White House officials said that Vladimir Putin was ready to provide Kiev with security guarantees "in the style of Article 5." In other words, he was referring to NATO's collective defense commitments.

However, as noted, the Russian dictator did not publicly confirm that he had made such a commitment during his stay in Alaska for the meeting with Donald Trump. In addition, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has stated that Russia must have a say on Ukrainian security issues, which may also include China. For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out Beijing as a potential guarantor of peace.

Lavrov repeated this demand, and UNIAN recalls that Moscow, at the Istanbul talks in 2022, supported Ukraine's proposal to include the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the US, Russia, China, the UK, and France—in the security guarantees. "Russia supports guarantees based on the principle of collective security, on the principles of indivisible security. Anything else, anything unilateral, is, of course, an absolutely hopeless endeavor," Lavrov said.

Several senior European officials and diplomats who preferred to remain anonymous said they viewed Lavrov's comments as an attempt to delay the process. They also doubted that Putin was ready to strike a deal. | BGNES