Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday outlined Kyiv’s conditions for a lasting peace: a ceasefire as a first step, firm security guarantees from the US and Europe, and at least ten years of international funding for the Ukrainian army. Zelensky said this in an online address to the Hudson Institute in Washington, as reported by Ukrinform and the news outlet Kyiv Post, among others.
“We need not just peace. Peace must be just and strong,” Zelensky said, according to the news outlet Kyiv Post. The sequence was crucial: “The right position for today is a ceasefire. Point one.” Only after that could real diplomacy begin, while working groups worked on a plan.
What the guarantees should concretely deliver
According to Zelensky, the core of the security guarantees is a strong national army that must be financed from outside for at least a decade. “We need a large, large strong army, at least ten years,” he said. The economy damaged by the war needed time to recover and could not sustain such a force on its own. Even after the war, Ukraine would need air defence and other technologies for protection.
As a further element, he named a Europe-led coalition of willing states that could send personnel to Ukraine, supported by American security commitments. In his view, the decisive question remains open: who reacts, and how, if Russia attacks again with drones, missiles or ground troops? “Who will react? Not only our army. Who and how? And to this day we have no answers,” he said, according to Kyiv Post.
Ukraine continues to seek NATO membership. However, according to Zelensky, bilateral guarantees from Washington could form an alternative framework. Purely diplomatic assurances were not enough: “Russia will attack if it believes it can, if it believes one is weak.” Already this week, according to Kyiv Post, he had stated that Ukraine was considering US security guarantees modelled on Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which would have to be approved by the US Congress to prevent a repeat of the failed Budapest Memorandum of 1994.
Abu Dhabi as a possible venue for talks
Zelensky said Ukrainian, American and Russian negotiating teams could meet in Abu Dhabi in early or mid-November. However, the proposal depended on Moscow’s response. “We are ready to meet every day, even tomorrow, but everything depends on the Russians,” he said. Moscow had already scuppered a meeting planned for October with another pretext.
According to Ukrinform, the possibility of restarting the talks had been discussed after the recent visit of US special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow. First there should be a meeting of Ukrainian and American teams at the technical level, later talks at the level of heads of state and government could follow.
The background includes a meeting in Oslo: according to the president on Tuesday evening, Ukraine and its European partners there had worked out proposals for the path to peace with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, including the transition to a possible trilateral meeting of heads of state and government. Witkoff had taken part in person, Kushner online, the news agency Interfax-Ukraine reported, citing Zelensky. These proposals were to be handed to the Russian side during Witkoff’s visit to Russia on Wednesday.
According to Zelensky, Kyiv had also supported the American initiative for an energy ceasefire from the outset and had agreed not to attack sensitive facilities in the Russian energy sector as long as Russia spared Ukrainian infrastructure. Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin had rejected this and responded with further attacks, Zelensky said, according to Interfax-Ukraine.
Zelensky warned against easing sanctions, releasing frozen Russian assets or making financial concessions to Moscow without credible safeguards against new aggression. In addition to security guarantees, he named reconstruction, the involvement of American and European companies and Ukraine’s EU accession as further elements of ending the war.
According to Ukrinform, Zelensky made a possible meeting with Trump and Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Florida dependent on whether talks arise there. He had not yet received an invitation to the summit.
