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According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he met with Secretary General Mark Rutte of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Kyiv and talked about security guarantees for Ukraine.
Zelensky stated on Friday that Ukraine wants to obtain “Article 5-like” guarantees, which are comparable to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, after the negotiations.
“The outcome we must achieve: a crystal-clear architecture of which countries assist us on the ground, which are responsible for the security of our skies, which guarantee security at sea and support Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a statement on his official website.
According to Xinhua news agency, he went on to say such guarantees should also include partner countries’ funding of the Ukrainian military.
Zelensky said that discussions are still going on between Ukraine, Europe, and the US over the precise nature of the security guarantees.
Zelensky and Rutte also talked about cooperation efforts to settle the crisis between Russia and Ukraine and military sales to Ukraine coordinated under the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, which was recommended by NATO and the United States.
This comes just hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be meeting.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told US news outlet NBC.
Lavrov claimed that although Ukraine had obstructed the agenda of the conference, Russia had agreed to be flexible on a number of topics brought up by US President Donald Trump during his meeting with Putin in Alaska last week.
In a tweet on the Truth Social site on Monday night, Trump claimed to have called Putin and started setting up a bilateral meeting between Zelensky and Putin, with no specific location yet.
Following a Putin-Zelensky summit, Trump said, US, Russian, and Ukrainian leaders would meet in a trilateral setting.
In the past, Lavrov has stated that Russia is open to any bilateral or trilateral approaches to resolving the Ukrainian crisis.
Source: IANS
