MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published on Sunday that a group of nations including United Nations Security Council members should be the guarantors of Ukraine’s security.
Reuters reported last week that President Vladimir Putin is demanding that Ukraine give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking told Reuters.
Lavrov told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump had discussed the issue of a security guarantee for Ukraine and that Putin had raised the issue of the failed Istanbul discussions of 2022.
At those discussions, Russia and Ukraine discussed Ukraine’s permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, and other countries, according to a copy of a draft agreement seen by Reuters in 2022.
Lavrov told NBC that a group including Security Council members should guarantee Ukraine’s security. The group could also include Germany and Turkey and other countries, Lavrov said.
“And the guarantors would be guaranteeing the security of Ukraine, which must be neutral, which must be non-aligned with any military bloc and which must be non-nuclear,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript of the interview released by the foreign ministry.
Lavrov also made it clear that NATO membership for Ukraine was unacceptable for Russia, that Russia wanted protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine and that there was a territorial discussion to be had with Ukraine.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Ros Russell)
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