Ukraine condemns Macron’s suggestion of security guarantees for Russia

Ukraine and its Baltic allies have condemned French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that the West should consider Russia’s need for security guarantees if Moscow agrees to talks to end the war in Ukraine.

Macron, who made the suggestion in an interview with French TV station TF1, said Europe needs to prepare its future security architecture and also think “how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.”

Ukrainian president’s top aide, Mykhailo Podolyak, said it is the world that needs security guarantees from Russia, not the other way around.

“Civilized world needs ‘security guarantees’ from barbaric intentions of post-Putin Russia,” Podolyak said on Twitter on Sunday.

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said a “denunclearized and demilitarized” Russia would be the best guarantee of peace not only for Ukraine, but also for the world.

“Someone wants to provide security guarantees to a terrorist and killer state?” Danilov wrote on Twitter.

Macron’s suggestion of security guarantees for Moscow has also spurred criticism in some Baltic countries that border Russia and see it as growing threat.

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Former Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb said he “fundamentally” disagreed with Macron.

“The only security guarantees we should focus on are essentially non-Russian,” he said on his Twitter account. “Russia needs first to guarantee that it does not attack others.”

“For this it is enough: leave the territory of our country, pay reparations, punish all war criminals; voluntarily surrender nuclear weapons,” Arakhamia said on the Telegram messaging app.

“After that, we are ready to sit down at the negotiation table and talk about security guarantees.”

Macron and Zelenskiy have held frequent talks during the more than nine months of war, and Zelenskiy has thanked the French president for trying to find diplomatic solutions while also rejecting Macron’s suggestions that Kyiv could be ready to compromise.

After several rounds of talks earlier in the war, Kyiv and Moscow have not met to negotiate the end of the conflict for months.

Kyiv says peace talks are only possible if Russia halts its attacks and withdraws from all Ukrainian territories it seized.

Zainab Sa’id