This is a post on X by Vadim Mazlinski.
Yesterday, important talks took place in
Washington with the president of the
United States and European leaders. This
was truly a significant step toward
ending the war and ensuring the security
of Ukraine and our people. We're already
working on concrete content of the
security guarantees. Today, we continue
coordination at the level of leaders.
There will be discussions preparing the
relevant formats. Working tomorrow,
national security advisers in constant
contact. There will be security
guarantees. I thank all our partners for
their determination, support. Ukraine
feels this strength. We will do
everything to make the path to peace a
reality through partnership, through
security guarantees, and through the
courage of the Ukrainian people. And
then alongside that, images of uh
Zilinski and Trump. You've also got then
Trump showing those European leaders
parts of the White House. And then also
that group photo of them too, bottom
right. Let's bring in our military
analyst Sean Bell who's here with us.
And Sean, let me just uh check this
again. This tweet by Zenci, the last
three minutes, one, two, three mentions
in about four four sentences of security
guarantees, it trips off the tongue.
What does it mean in practice?
>> Yeah, it's no great surprise, is it?
Because if you look at the two factors,
if there's going to be a peace, one of
them is going to be about where it
stops. So, there's a bit of conversation
about land probably needs to happen
behind closed doors. The other thing is
how on earth do you stop Russia just
coming again? And of course those with
longer memories 1994 the Budapest memo
was signed gave guarantees by America,
the UK and Russia that the sovereignty
of Ukraine would be protected if they
gave up the nuclear weapons that they
had following the fall of the Berlin
Wall and 20 years later that was all
ripped up and nobody did anything about
it. And then every time I've been to uh
Ukraine since I'm pointantly reminded of
that fact that they we provided
guarantees and they didn't materialize
when they were needed. So, President
Zinsky will be very clear that whatever
happens, there's got to be some security
guarantees. If that's not NATO, then
potentially it needs to be a coalition
of the willing or whatever, but it has
to be credible. And I think part of the
challenge, and we've seen it come up
several times now, is how do you provide
teeth to it when in big handfuls,
America is more focused on China and
sees Russia as a European problem,
whereas actually providing incredible
force is really difficult to do for
small number of countries. There's that
old if it walks like a duck, if it
quacks like a duck, if it looks like a
duck, it's a duck, right? So, how is
there a difference between NATO
membership which provides security
guarantees and 30 countries under the
guise of the coalition of the willing
that are going to provide security
guarantees? It's NATO in all but name,
is it not? Well, it's interesting how
this conversation has come up. Um,
security guarantees. President Putin's
been very clear that Ukraine can't be a
member of NATO for any peace to and also
that Ukraine has to be demilitarized. At
the Alaska summit, there was no mention
of security guarantees. Over the
weekend, Steve Wickoff suddenly came out
with a boy.
>> Yeah. Suddenly came out with the fact
that it had been mentioned. All of a
sudden, everybody's piled onto this fact
that potentially Russia is apparently
keen on providing that the West
providing security guarantees. I don't
buy it yet. In fact, Russia was pouring
a bit of cold water on that. So um
whether it's NATO providing no security
guarantees or individual countries the
point is uh that's completely
diametrically opposed to where Russia
appeared to be only a few days ago. So
I'm not entirely sure that Russia is
ready to acquies to that particular
request.