Ukraine will not agree to limit the size of its armed forces or abandon its NATO membership aspirations as part of a potential peace deal with Russia. Ukraine’s delegation conveyed this position to the U.S. earlier this week at a meeting in Saudi Arabia, a source close to the negotiations told European Pravda.
According to the source, the meeting was not intended to finalize a position on a peace agreement but served as an opportunity for the Ukrainian side to inform its American partners of Kyiv’s “red lines.” Sources reported the same information to RBC-Ukraine and BBC Russia.
“For Ukraine, there are red lines — including that there can be no restrictions on the size of the defence forces and no prohibitions on Ukraine’s participation in international organisations, including the E.U. and NATO. The issue of NATO also came up in remarks by [Zelensky Chief of Staff Andriy] Yermak, stressing that Russia must not have a veto right,” the source told European Pravda.
During the negotiations, the delegations also discussed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the Russian-occupied territories but did not address the possibility of territorial concessions, according to the BBC. A Ukrainian diplomat noted that Kyiv acknowledges it cannot reclaim these territories by military means, but it doesn’t recognize them as Russian and will seek to regain them through diplomacy.