A deputy assistant secretary will conduct virtual talks later this week
FILE PHOTO: State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller © AP / Nathan Howard
Washington and Kiev are about to start virtual talks about the security guarantees the G7 pledged to Ukraine at the NATO summit in Lithuania, the State Department confirmed on Monday.
“Those talks are going to kick off this week,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters at the daily briefing, describing them as the “outgrowth of the statement that the G7 released on the margins of the last NATO summit in Vilnius.”
The question arose because an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Andrey Ermak, told journalists about the upcoming talks on Sunday. Ermak said that Ukraine expected the guarantees to ensure its “ability to win” the conflict with Russia.
Miller, however, claimed that the guarantees offered in Vilnius were about “long-term commitments to Ukraine’s security.” This is a process “separate and apart from the security assistance that we regularly provide now,” he told reporters, and is intended to help Ukraine “establish a long-term military that can serve as a deterrent.”
The US and its allies have poured over $100 billion worth of weapons, equipment, and ammunition into Ukraine since hostilities with Russia escalated in February 2022, while insisting they are not a party to the conflict. Moscow has warned the West that such deliveries are legitimate targets for the Russian military and risk making them de facto combatants.
The G7 ‘security guarantees’ were supposed to be Ukraine’s consolation prize for not getting an invitation to join NATO, something Zelensky has repeatedly voiced disappointment over. Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov said at the time that he wanted to see “details and prices” of the proposal before judging its merits.
According to Miller, the US-Ukraine talks later this week are supposed to address the details of the “security commitments.” The State Department spokesman specified that the talks would be held “virtually, at the deputy assistant secretary level.” He also noted that they would not involve Victoria Nuland, who was previously assistant secretary in charge of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, but was promoted last week to acting deputy secretary.
Nuland was a key player in the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, which brought Ukrainian nationalists to power and triggered the current conflict. In May, she revealed US plans to begin discussions about Ukraine’s “long-term future” concurrently with Kiev’s military offensive, which Washington had helped plan “for some 4-5 months.”
