Fortress Ukraine: guarantees of peace for the only army of the West

Exclusive. In interview The President of Ukraine told the Italian publication Il Foglio about options for security guarantees for Ukraine. According to Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the most reliable security guarantee for Ukraine is only full membership in NATO.

NATO Secretary General Marko Rutte's visit to Kyiv

Security guarantees based on the example of Israel, when the country receives comprehensive military, political and financial support from its allies, may be acceptable. However, only for the period while Ukraine will move towards membership in the Alliance.

"These are very good offers. Yes, of course, this is not NATO, but on the way to NATO. That is, technologies, anti-aircraft defense, money, Israel receives, develops — this is a fact. Not only that the rockets were reflected, but also the attacks of other states on their enemies. So far, not a single country in those places of the Russian Federation, from where rockets and planes took off, flew at our people and killed them, fired back, even for military purposes. This is a fact. We are the only ones fighting," Zelensky emphasized.

He reminded that some countries were unhappy with regard to Ukraine, that "we are retaliating against the Russian Federation, its energy sector, and its military goals, which was absolutely fair." "They even wanted to ban this," the president remarked.

In this context, Volodymyr Zelensky noted that "I would like to understand what these security guarantees are." "I would like to see these proposals in detail," said the President of Ukraine.

Kyiv strives to end the war already this year, but real security guarantees are a necessary condition for peace, otherwise a subsequent attack by Russia will be inevitable.

All the "concerns" of the dictator Putin regarding Ukraine's membership in NATO are dictated only by the fact that it will make impossible the liquidation of Ukraine as an independent and sovereign state, the genocide of Ukrainians and the annexation of lands to Russia.

It is for this reason that the Russian Foreign Ministry calls Ukraine's refusal to join NATO a key demand of Moscow.

Alexander Hrushko, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, called the decision of the Bucharest NATO summit, which confirmed the Alliance's intention to accept Ukraine and Georgia, "catastrophic for European security." "Not withdrawing this wording will create an ambiguity that is absolutely unacceptable for us when we talk about the need to achieve a viable, sustainable, concrete settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and around it," he said.

But in March 2023, the Kremlin declared that it saw no threat from Sweden and Finland joining NATO and did not threaten them.

"They have repeatedly said that Russia does not pose a threat to these countries. Because we don't have any disputes with these countries - that's one thing. And these countries never pretended to become "anti-Russia". They did not pose a threat to us - accordingly, there was no threat to them," said the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, in response to the question whether the Kremlin is worried about Turkey's upcoming approval of Finland's application to NATO.

After all, with the accession of Sweden and Finland, the land border of the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance with Russia more than doubled - from 1215 to 2600 km (the length of the Russian-Finnish border is about 1300 km), and the Baltic Sea, with the exception of the Kaliningrad coast and the Gulf of Finland, turned out to be internal NATO by sea.

Putin is trying to manipulate Ukraine's allies to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

The irony is that the Russian dictator is not ready to limit himself to the solution of only the Bucharest summit of the Alliance.

NATO will no longer be able to "relegate" Russia to secondary roles in European and international politics, it is time for the North Atlantic Alliance to return to the borders of 1997, said in January 2022 the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Ryabkov, who arrived for the Russian-American negotiations on security guarantees. "So NATO needs to gather money and go to the borders of 1997," the Russian diplomat put forward an ultimatum.

At the same time, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined the Alliance in 1999, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Estonia in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and in 2020 North Macedonia.

Kyiv insists that Ukraine's membership in the Alliance will strengthen NATO's military potential and security architecture on the European continent. And the policy of pacifying the aggressor will only lead to new conflicts, as was the case with Hitler.

Vera Perovskaya