Ukraine: Rutte and Zelenskyy discuss security guarantees

The NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is in Kyiv to discuss future security guarantees for Ukraine. He's been holding talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president says Russia is doing everything it can to prevent him from meeting with Vladimir Putin. Russia didn't want to end this war and it still doesn't. Russia keeps issuing new ultimatums to delay the possibility of ending this war. They're doing everything they can to avoid President Trump imposing sanctions on them. They're pulling out all the stops to prevent the United States using the leverage against them that it has. Russia's intentions haven't changed a bit. Robust security guarantees will be essential. And this is what we are now working to define. So that when the time comes for you to enter that bilateral meeting, you have the unmistakable force of Ukraine's friends behind you. Ensuring that Russia will uphold any deal and will never ever again attempt to take one square kilometre of Ukraine. DW correspondent Nick Connolly has been following developments in Kyiv for us. Nick, what stood out for you from what we heard from Mark Rutter and President Zelensky today? So I think this was first and foremost about the blame game about Ukraine. President Zelensky making it clear that he is not the impediment to talks, to some kind of negotiations. That he is willing to meet Putin and talk about compromises about some kind of resolution to this war. And that it is the Russian side that is constantly coming up with new demands. And indeed since that summit between Trump and Putin, we've seen the Russians basically row back on lots of the things that seemed to have been resolved in terms of them saying basically any security guarantees for Ukraine that don't involve our friends and don't give us a veto are unacceptable to us. So that was kind of the main takeaway. And then I think from Mark Rutter, I think the kind of biggest takeaway, something I hadn't heard quite as clearly as today, was that thing about making sure after security guarantees that Russia never comes back. Not only that, that it is unable to ever take another square kilometre of Ukrainian territory. I think that is going to be very welcome for a Ukrainian audience. And it is about the ambition of what these security guarantees will be. That this is not just some vague promise of the kind that Ukraine has had in the past, but this actually would put a stop to any further Russian incursion. And what about timing, Nick? Why is the NATO chief in Ukraine today? It is a bit strange given that Donald Trump has made clear that he doesn't see Ukraine in NATO. That this is basically off the cards in the medium term. You could ask yourself, why is Rutter here in Ukraine? He can't give membership, even though he made it pretty clear that he sees Ukraine's future in NATO sometime in the distant future. I think this is mainly about Rutter as basically this best hope that Europe and Ukraine have of getting a message through to Trump. He is speaking the language of Trump. He talked about Ukraine being a proud nation, a great nation. He was very effusive about all the things that he says Donald Trump has achieved in the last few weeks. Trying to keep Trump interested, trying to present that message in a way that is short and kind of clear enough for Trump to not zone out. And so there is a sense that he is basically a kind of back channel, a kind of intermediary between Europe, Ukraine and the American administration. There's that. And then there's also the bit where NATO is now basically coordinating help from different European countries for Ukraine. Collecting money from European countries to buy American weapons to get Donald Trump on side, to show him that this is also good for America's economy and then sending those weapons here. So there's lots of kind of off the radar things that we don't know too much about. He was pressed. We tried to get him to talk about what those security guarantees for Ukraine would look like, but he wouldn't be drawn. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, just told the NBC broadcaster that a meeting with Zelensky and Putin isn't on the cards for now. Does that suggest that Trump's whirlwind diplomacy has essentially run out of steam for now? Well, that's definitely the view as seen here from Kiev. There was a lot of scepticism anyway that Putin would meet Zelensky, especially given how the Russian side is constantly saying that basically Zelensky is illegitimate, that he isn't a match and equal for Putin and that his ability to sign any deal is under question, isn't kind of taken as a given. And I think, you know, seen from Ukraine, there is a real sense that the Russians want to take more territory. They are not willing to stop this yet. They're not feeling enough pressure from the American side. Donald Trump hasn't made good on his promise to put more sanctions on Russia yet, even though they didn't agree to the ceasefire that Trump had been demanding going into that summit in Alaska. So now they're just, once again, trying to make it clear this is not about us. If this falls apart, do not blame us, Ukraine, for this. Look to Moscow. And I guess we're going to hear more calls from Ukraine, also maybe from other European countries, for the Trump administration to turn the screw and to put more economic pressure on Vladimir Putin. We've already seen sanctions against India for buying Russian oil. And I think there's going to be a drive for more of this kind of things to really basically deprive Putin of the money to carry on this war. That's DW's Nick Connolly reporting from Kiev. Nick, thank you.