US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that after the end of the war, Ukraine will have the right to conclude security agreements not only with the USA and European countries, Washington is now working on this.
Any sovereign country in the world has the right to conclude security alliances with other countries…
And so I think everybody recognises – including, incidentally, for the first time the Russian side under pressure or at the suggestion of President Trump – that in fact Ukraine after the conflict has the right to conclude security agreements with other countries,” he said on Fox News.
He said the US is now working with European and non-European countries to create such a security guarantee.
“This is something that needs to be put in place after the peace agreement so that Ukraine can feel safe moving forward. We are involved in coordinating that,” Rubio noted.
The US Secretary of State reiterated that each side will have to make certain concessions.
“In any negotiation to end a war or any conflict, both sides have to give as well as receive. Essentially, neither side will get 100 per cent here. Each side will have to make certain concessions. And obviously the land or where you draw these boundaries – where the war ends – is going to be part of these negotiations. It’s not easy, and it may not even be fair, but it’s what it takes to end the war,” he said.
Rubio added that in the end, Ukraine and Russia must decide what those borders will be, “what each can accept.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington on 18 August, where he met with US President Donald Trump. There was also a meeting between Trump and Zelensky with key European allies. According to Zelensky, the issue of security guarantees, among other things, was discussed in Washington.
This meeting took place three days after Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump held talks on 15 in Alaska. The main topic of the talks was the end of Russia’s war against Ukraine, but no specific agreements were reported.
Ukraine, amid the continuing Russian invasion, has expressed a desire to join NATO or receive weighty security guarantees from Washington and the so-called European “coalition of the willing.”
Moscow is demanding, among other things, that NATO not be expanded – that is, that Ukraine be denied the right to join the alliance.
U.S. officials have long rejected Ukraine’s membership in NATO.