MOSCOW: The office of the Ukrainian president on Tuesday released a draft document titled: The Kiev Security Compact International Security Guarantees for Ukraine: Recommendations.
The document was presented by the co-chairs of the working group on international security guarantees, Chief of the Presidential Office Andrey Yermak and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
According to the document, among those who took part in its elaboration were Western experts, including former and acting politicians and scientists. Despite the earlier proposals, the document provides for neither Kiev’s neutral status nor for Russia’s participation as a security guarantor.
Following are key provisions of the document.
Guarantors
- It is suggested a binding security document, the Kiev Security Compact, be signed between Ukraine and guarantor nations. An alternative is a set of bilateral agreements.
- The signatories will include the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Canada, Poland, Turkey, France, countries of Northern, Central, Southern Europe, and Baltic states. Russia is not named among possible participants.
"The security guarantees will be positive; they lay out a range of commitments made by a group of guarantors, together with Ukraine. They need to be binding based on bilateral agreements, but brought together under a joint strategic partnership document - called the Kiev Security Compact. The Compact will bring a core group of allied countries together with Ukraine. This could include the US, UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, and Nordic, Baltic, Central and Eastern European countries," the document reads.
- The "guarantees framework may be supplemented by additional agreements," for instance, on supplies of air-and missile-defense systems to Ukraine and on regional security in the Black Sea.
- These agreements do not constrain Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO and the EU.
"Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO and benefit from its mutual defense arrangements is safeguarded in its Constitution. This aspiration is the sovereign decision of Ukraine. Both NATO and EU membership will significantly bolster Ukraine’s security in the long-term," the document reads.
What Ukraine wants to have
- Kiev wants a list of military, infrastructure, technical and information measures to be elaborated, with some of them to be taken by other countries immediately in case of an attack on Ukraine by a third country.
"In case of aggression, the joint document should spell out extended guarantee commitments by guarantors to use all elements of their national and collective power and take appropriate measures - which may include diplomatic, economic, and military means - to enable Ukraine to stop the
aggression, restore its sovereignty, ensure its security, military edge, and capability to deter its enemies and defend itself by itself against any threat," the document says.
- Ukraine counts on the allies’ investments into its defense sector, on their weapons and intelligence data.
- Ukraine’s armed forces should take part in EU training missions and joint drills with NATO.
"The strongest security guarantee for Ukraine lies in its capacity to defend itself against an aggressor under the UN Charter’s article 51. To do so, Ukraine needs the resources to maintain a significant defensive force capable of withstanding the Russian Federation’s armed forces and paramilitaries. This requires a multi-decade effort of sustained investment in Ukraine’s defense industrial base, scalable weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies, intensive training missions and joint exercises under the European Union and NATO flags," the document says.
- The agreement should envisage a "set of snapback sanctions" against the "aggressor."