KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that discussions by Kyiv’s partners on security guarantees for Ukraine should be “urgently” elevated to a leaders’ level, and that U.S. President Donald Trump should take part.
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 added that he would also 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 Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Anastasiia Malenko; Writing by Dan PeleschukEditing by Tomasz Janowski and Sharon Singleton)
