Volodymyr Zelensky is said to be “ready for any dialogue format” to bring peace to its country back, but on condition that the USA and Europe give “security guarantees” that prevent new Russian attacks in the future. An availability declared the day after Donald Trump made it known to have spoken on the phone with Vladimir Putin and while Moscow reiterates that any agreement must exclude a Kiev entrance into NATO. The Kremlin has neither confirmed nor denied the telephone interview between the American and Russian presidents, but two vice ministers of Moscow Foreign Affairs took charge of turning off the easy enthusiasm to say that the respective positions remain distant.
“The signals” can be “important”, said Serghei Ryabkov, but Russia does not see “any change” in the Washington line, whose “assistance to Kiev continues”. “It is important – the other deputy minister, Mikhail Galuzin – that words are supported by concrete steps that take into consideration the legitimate Russian interests, has given him. But no specific proposal of this nature has so far been received ». What are the interests that Russia judges “legitimate”, indeed, “vital”, Ryabkov recalled it: “the indisputable property” of the Ukrainian regions partially occupied and officially annexed (Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzia and Kherson, in addition to Crimea) and The guarantee that Kiev will not enter the NATO.
That Ukraine does not have the strength to militarily regain Crimea and the other four regions, Zelensky has for some time admitted it, suggesting that a compromise in territorial terms is necessary. As for NATO, he recently recognized the opposition of the USA and Germany to an entrance to his country. There is therefore the node of which other security guarantees of the Kiev Western allies can be trusted, after those received in 1994 in exchange for the renunciation of the nuclear arsenal inherited from the USSR, who have clearly failed their purpose.
“If you have the awareness that America and Europe will not abandon us, they will support us and provide us with security guarantees, I would be ready for any dialogue format,” Zelensky assured in an interview with British TV ITV. Trump, added the Ukrainian president, “does not only need to end the war, he needs to act so that Putin no longer has any possibility of moving war”. And this “would already be a victory”.
An appeal therefore addressed primarily to the tenant of the White House, the initiator of a diplomatic path with which Zelensky has to deal, to the point of promising Trump contracts for the exploitation of rare lands and other precious mining reserves in exchange for a guarantee protection. A promise points out some commentator in Moscow, in contradiction with the fact that much of those reserves is located in Donbass, in the territory controlled by the Russians. This is not enough to mitigate Europe’s fear of being excluded from games. “Any peace agreement must respect the Sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” said the spokesman for the European Commission’s external action service today, without answering the question whether Washington has warned the EU or not before the phone call. The fact that Trump has made the call publicly marked by a rule of the diplomatic protocol that requires a joint announcement of the two interested parties is an attempt by the Tycoon to “start a dialogue as soon as possible” to get to a ceased in Ukraine fire, has Said the Politologist Dmitry Suslov, of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow in the newspaper.
But the Kremlin wants more, that is, “a fundamental revision of American politics” towards Russia. The eyes are now focused on Munich’s security conference, scheduled for the weekend, where Zelensky will meet the American vice president JD Vance. The negotiator appointed by Trump, Keith Kellogg, expected in turn in Ukraine on February 20, will also be present. The latter had said in recent days that the US plan would not have been presented in Munich because it is up to the type to make it public, and a NATO source confirmed today that the plan “is not yet ready”.
The ex -general correspondent for Trump, who is intensifying diplomatic contacts in these days, has made it known that he had, among others, an interview with the Italian ambassador in the United States Mariangela Zappia “to discuss the cooperation on the efforts to report stability And peace in Ukraine and in the region ». Italy is “a precious transatlantic partner”, added Kellogg on its X profile. The meeting, according to what has been learned, is part of a reconnaissance of the various positions that the former general is making with some of the main European countries: Kellogg has already seen the ambassador and the British national security councilor recently, Peter Mandelson and Jonathan Powell, the Baltic Foreign Ministers and the head of Czech diplomacy.