Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Jan. 25 that a U.S. document laying out security guarantees for Ukraine is ready and needs only to be signed.
“For us, security guarantees are first and foremost guarantees of security from the United States. The document is 100 percent ready, and we are waiting for our partners to confirm the date and place when we will sign it,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference during a visit to Vilnius, Lithuania.
After it’s signed, Zelenskyy said, it will be “sent for ratification to the U.S. Congress and the Ukrainian parliament.”
He didn’t provide details on the nature of the guarantees provided in the document.
Zelenskyy’s remarks suggest that progress is being made after talks were held between Ukraine and Russia with U.S. mediation, the first meeting of its kind since the war began.
The meeting was held in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. In a statement, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was hosting the two-day talks “as part of ongoing efforts to promote dialogue and identify political solutions to the crisis.”
That a meeting could be held at all was a sign of progress in the United States’ efforts to end the four-year conflict, but no deal emerged from the talks.
However, both sides said they were open to continuing discussions, and another meeting in Abu Dhabi is scheduled for Feb. 1.
Speaking about the trilateral talks in Vilnius, Zelenskyy said that “the 20-point [U.S.] plan and problematic issues” were being discussed.
“There were many problematic issues, but now there are fewer,” he said.
One of those issues, for both sides, involves the status of Ukraine’s eastern provinces.
Russia has demanded that Kyiv surrender its entire eastern industrial area, the Donbas. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Jan. 23 that Russia’s insistence on gaining all of the Donbas area was “a very important condition.”
Although Russia has effective control over much of the disputed territory, Ukraine still holds about 20 percent of the Donetsk region of the Donbas and has resisted Russia’s demands that it cede the territory as part of a peace agreement.
In Vilnius, Zelenskyy indicated that Ukraine hadn’t moved from the position that Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be upheld.
He said Moscow wants to do everything possible to get Ukraine to abandon eastern regions that Russia has been unable to capture.
“These are two fundamentally different positions—Ukraine’s and Russia’s. The Americans are trying to find a compromise,” Zelenskyy said, adding that all sides must be ready to compromise, including the United States.
U.S. President Donald Trump, whose commitment to ending the conflict was a key pillar of his 2024 presidential campaign, has said that he believes an ultimate end to the conflict is “reasonably close.”
Ahead of the trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi, Trump dispatched his son-in-law Jared Kushner, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Josh Gruenbaum—who was recently appointed by Trump as senior adviser for his Board of Peace—to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Guy Birchall and Reuters contributed to this report.
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