Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in remarks today that his country had come to an agreement with allies on its defense capabilities, without elaborating on the details, and added that long-range missiles were “key” to ending the war with Russia.
“We have already finalized preparations for meetings with European partners,” Zelenskyy said, teasing to “important events” coming up next week.
“First, there will be a good and in many ways completely new agreement on our defense capabilities, an agreement that we will implement in fact as part of security guarantees for our state, for all our people in the long term,” he said.” It is too early to name the details now. Everything will be in a week.”
Zelenskyy added that his administration was “on the same page with our partners on diplomacy,” and referred to his meeting with Trump at the White House on Friday, where the two leaders discussed the Ukrainian president’s request for Tomahawk missiles, which would allow strikes deep into Russia.
After the meeting, Trump said he thought the way for Russia and Ukraine to begin ceasefire negotiations would be to freeze the current front lines and allow each country to keep the territory it controls as a starting point in talks — a proposal backed by Ukraine and its allies.
“We held a meeting with the President of the United States of America, and we agreed that this is how we will try to organize a dialogue, on the line that exists now,” Zelenskyy said. “This was President Trump’s signal to his team. It was also public. The front line can be the beginning of diplomacy.”
“Instead, Russia is once again doing everything to jump off diplomacy,” he continued. “And as soon as the issue of long-range missiles became a little further for us, for Ukraine, then almost automatically Russia became less interested in diplomacy. This is a signal that this very issue, the issue of long-range missiles, provides, perhaps, an irreplaceable key to peace.”
“The discussion about the Tomahawks turned out to be a strong investment in diplomacy,” he said. “We forced Russia to show that the Tomahawks are exactly the strong card they are reacting to. We will talk to the Europeans, to the Americans about long-range missiles.”