Ukraine’s chief negotiator in the peace talks with Russia, Mikhailo Podoliak, has explained that kyiv is negotiating separately with NATO countries to grant security guarantees to protect against Russia instead of insisting on joining the Atlantic Alliance as a full member.
The future of Ukraine’s relationship with NATO is considered the main obstacle in the peace negotiations with Moscow, which demands, as an unappealable condition, that the Ukrainian authorities renounce forever their aspirations to belong to the Alianza, either as a formal member or a satellite ally.
For this reason, the also main adviser to the Presidency of Ukraine has confirmed to the American network ABC that the Ukrainian government is negotiating an additional way away from “amorphous structures related to the United Nations, the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) or NATO” and focused instead on “effective partnerships” pto “make it clear to Russia that it is not necessary to attack Ukraine’s borders because it would have very, very bad consequences.”
The negotiator avoided commenting specifically on which countries would be involved in what he described as a new “multilateral” system of alliances.
For the rest and as regards the general state of the negotiations with RussiaPodoliak has confirmed that the talks “are absolutely true”in particular since, as the Turkish government, which acts as mediator in the dialogue, anticipated a few weeks ago, both parties began to focus on specific aspects of a possible peace process.
“Nobody here is trying to temporize. There just isn’t time to do it. It seems to me that Russia really intends to resolve certain issues through these talks given the international pressure of sanctions and the military pressure exerted by Ukraine,” said Podoliak.
However, the Ukrainian negotiator has acknowledged that right now both parties are still far from a point of agreement and that the dialogue could last “months”. “We have several drafts that collect the initial positions but right now there is no agreed project,” she declared.
The Ukrainian leaders, to give an example of the discrepancies, have already advanced that they will never accept membership in Russia of either Crimea or the self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhanskin the east of the country, as requested by Moscow.
Thus, Podoliak have asked the United States, the European Union and their allies to keep up the pressure on Russia so that Moscow finishes gaining “awareness of the situation” because “right now they are in a state of shock” due to the resistance offered by Ukrainian forces.
“I understand that for them (Russia) it must be a difficult process because they have been living under the illusion for eight years that they believed they were world champions, along with the United States. Now they are trying to understand to what extent they must lower their demands so that we start to agree things with them,” Podoliak said in the interview, published this Friday.
Podoliak has been convinced that this pressure will end up getting Russia “to adapt more and more to a negotiating position that will allow the signing of an agreement not only with them — because an exclusive peace agreement with Russia does not make sense, but one of a multilateral nature”, concluded the negotiator before recalling that “for this there must be countries that guarantee it”.