Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP and leader of the liberal Holos party in the Rada, told Newsweek that while the progress made between the U.S. and Ukraine in Geneva on President Donald Trump’s draft peace plan is “pretty reassuring,” there are still two questions that must be answered.
First is how Trump can get Russian President Putin to sign on to a peace deal, and second is how the U.S. will ensure that its security guarantees for Ukraine work.
Rudik, whose pro-European party holds 19 of the 450 seats in the Rada, said Putin has so far not even agreed to the “bare minimum” of a ceasefire.
“Here, Ukraine has done everything by the book. We have agreed to all the proposals from the United States, including an unconditional ceasefire, rare earth minerals deal, and, of course, a meeting of President Zelensky with Putin in Istanbul,” Rudik told Newsweek.
“But there was no step forward from Russia. And even right now, when these peaceful negotiations are happening, Russia continues killing us every day and night. So the question of even if this deal is perfect, how would President Trump pressure Russia into agreeing to it, is still absolutely open.”
She called the offer of U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in the draft 28-point deal a “breakthrough”.
“The details of those, and how they will be agreed and executed, is critical,” Rudik said. “Here in Ukraine, we are already burned by the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine gave up on our nuclear arsenal. However, instead of guarantees, we received assurances that didn’t work when Russia attacked us in 2014.”
Ukrainians “need to know how this time is different and that these potential security guarantees will be really executable,” she added. “So, for that, they need not to be the promise of one leader, but actually ratified in the Congress so that it will be a promise of the nation.”