While discussing the main mechanism of security guarantees for Ukraine after the end of the war.
The head of the Ukrainian negotiating delegation David Arakhamia spoke about security guarantees for Ukraine, the de-occupation of territories, a ceasefire, the continuation of the war and negotiations with Russia, reports the Chronicle.info with reference to RBC-Ukraine.
At yesterday's talks in Istanbul, the Ukrainian delegation for the first time substantively described its proposals for a peace treaty. So far, we are talking mainly about the mechanism of security guarantees for Ukraine after the end of the war. Both the Ukrainian side and representatives of the occupying country admit that for the first time in the last month, visible progress has been made in the negotiations.
However, as the head of the «Servant of the People» David Arakhamia, who heads the Ukrainian delegation at the talks, in the foreseeable future, hostilities and the extrusion of aggressors from Ukrainian soil will continue in any case.
– Today (interview recorded on Tuesday, March 29, — ed.) at a briefing you said that security guarantees for Ukraine would be similar to those provided for in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. But it states that an attack on one country would be tantamount to an attack on all signatories to the treaty. In our case, there is no such thing, right?
– There is no such thing, but we are not talking about collective security guarantees, but security guarantees specifically for Ukraine. An attack on Ukraine in any form — armed aggression, a police operation, anything crazy they can come up with, in any format — is considered an attack. And then the guarantor countries are obliged, after consultations, the ceiling of which is 72 hours, to provide the necessary assistance. It is directly prescribed there — in the form of armaments, the intervention of the armed forces of guarantors, and so on.
— You said that guarantor countries «are obliged» provide help. So what about legal obligations? It will not turn out that they will say: here, we will consult, and then they will send us, relatively speaking, two grenade launchers? Do we have safeguards against this?
— Look, in NATO there is no fuse as such. Given that we have «birth trauma» in the form of the Budapest Memorandum, when we thought that we had guarantees, and the guarantees turned out to be zilch, we try to play it safe twice. The first is legally, through ratifications. Secondly, there is such a term «primacy», that is, the advantage of international law over local legislation. Upon ratification, we demand that this treaty take precedence over local legislation.
Conceptually speaking, even the Russians themselves say that everything has become tougher. That is, we mentioned Article 5 of NATO, but we ourselves wrote even more harshly.
— Will Ukraine be able to continue to receive weapons from Western allies, as it receives them now and before the invasion?< /p>
– Of course.
– Is this our principled position?
— Certainly. There is such a concept of «fortified neutrality», that is, you need to rely on your own army, or additionally have guarantees. That is, like Switzerland, Israel has a reserve army that can be mobilized in large numbers and give the necessary rebuff in the event of aggression.
It is very important to emphasize that we do not follow such a model, that we have neutrality, and therefore we have relaxed, we do not need an army, let our guarantors take care of us. No, as they say, trust in God, but don't make a mistake yourself. Therefore, the concept of «fortified neutrality» is very close to us.
— And this means that in the process of strengthening our army we will continue to receive technical, military assistance, weapons, etc.?
— Yes, of course.
— During the talks in Istanbul, did you touch upon the issues of the ceasefire and its conditions?
Our proposals are still at an early stage. From the very first day we said: look, you are withdrawing your troops, sit down and talk. But in this case, the Russians lose a strong negotiating position, so they react aggressively to this.
And we made a decision — we specifically asked at the first meeting, at the first question: will you move within the framework of the Vienna Convention? They confirmed it. And the Vienna Convention helps us a lot, because it clearly states that if a treaty is signed under duress, then it is considered null and void. Since they have already officially declared that they adhere to the norms of the Vienna Convention, and international guarantors will not sit down at the table at all without this, then this is our fuse.
When we reach the conditional signing of the treaty or the moment when it is already possible seriously discuss, they will have to leave completely. And then we will sit down to sign, endorse or initial it.
This is an international fuse, not just our demands or requests, but the necessary conditions to ensure the working signing of this document.
— I understand that now, in any case, we are talking about the return of troops to the lines as of February 23 of this year?
— Yes, that's right.
< strong>– The ORDLO question is still «out of brackets», did I understand correctly?
– Yes. He is the most difficult. At the negotiating groups, to be honest, they did not touch it, because they understood that we did not have enough political mandate to discuss it. Therefore, they immediately took it out of the brackets before the meeting of the leaders, and worked on all other issues.
— Our south is obviously important to the invaders — Kherson region, & # 171; corridor & # 187; to Crimea. The question is more like a politician, do you think they can really leave our territories? If this does not happen, then no treaty is possible?
— Yes. We talked about it from the very first meeting. We cannot have a half-hearted decision: we did it, otherwise we will not do it. We are working on a decision on each issue separately, but we can only sign something in its entirety and in a complex. If this is not the case, then the meaning of the whole conversation is lost. They also supported this position at home and decided that yes, that’s how we are going.
– That is, we can clearly record that while they remain in the territories that they occupied after February 23, there are no treaties, let alone referendums?
– Yes, of course.
– Does the topic of compensation to Ukraine and sanctions against RF?
— On their part, it sounds: let's cancel some courts, withdraw lawsuits … Sanctions are heard very often. But our position is simple: we imposed our own sanctions, but they are of little concern to them, while international sanctions are imposed by international partners. Accordingly, this is the subject of their discussion with international partners.
Moreover, most of the countries that imposed sanctions are now considered as guarantors of our security. They can talk about sanctions, but we didn't impose them, so it's not for us to remove them.
— There is also a lot of criticism about the fact that we came out with an underestimated negotiating position, for example, we ourselves propose to make ourselves neutral, so that military exercises on our territory take place only with the consent of the guarantor countries, we undertake not to have foreign bases, and so on. Why are we immediately losing these positions?
— We have never had foreign bases and we have no right to have them. The people who write this, they simply did not read our legislation. Russian propaganda said that we have some kind of naval bases here and so on, we never had them. This is fantastic.
— And what about exercises and neutrality in the future?
— We and the Russians had initial request positions. Believe me, when the representatives of the guarantor countries see where we started and where we are after three weeks of negotiations, they are very optimistic. They say that a lot of work has been done, we are cool. And this is not so much the merit of us as negotiators, the Armed Forces do this work for us.
Negotiating position directly correlates with positions at the front, and not vice versa. Therefore, God willing, we will have even better positions. You understand that we are now discussing a concept that will still move up and down, left and right. I deliberately kept the original positions, they gave us these ultimatums and the surrender agreement — I have it preserved for the museum of the history of our victory. This copy lies with me and is waiting for its time.
– To summarize very briefly, while negotiations and consultations continue, the squeezing of the occupiers from our territory on earth continues. Will it continue for the foreseeable future wherever we can?
– Of course. In general, we initially said that our negotiations do not influence the military in any way. They are doing their job, freeing our land. If there are successes, we naturally try to immediately use this in negotiations as a counterargument and bargain for better positions. But by no means the other way around.