Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that Belarus must provide security guarantees for Ukraine in the future once Kiev asserts its neutral status.
“At the request of the Ukrainian side, its neutral, non-bloc and non-nuclear status must be accompanied by security guarantees,” Lavrov said.
“We proposed that the Republic of Belarus should, of course, be among these guarantor countries.”
On Tuesday (5), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that “serious players who are ready to go all the way” are needed on security guarantees for the country.
“We need a circle of countries that within 24 hours will supply us with any weapons,” Zelensky said.
These countries need to be states “that have real influence over sanctions policy” and that are prepared to mobilize “as soon as we hear any threat from the Russian Federation,” he added.
On Wednesday (6), the Kremlin said that peace talks are not progressing as quickly as they would like. The Russian government accuses the West of trying to derail these negotiations, fueling “hysteria” over allegations of war crimes by Moscow forces following their withdrawal from the Kiev region.
On March 28, Zelensky stated that he was ready to accept neutral and non-nuclear status: “This was the first key point for the Russian Federation, as I recall. And as I recall, they started the war because of that,” he declared, with the caveat that any agreement would need to be endorsed by the Ukrainian population.
*with information from Reuters
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
