The potential security guarantee between the US and Ukraine will likely reflect the security agreements signed by European NATO nations, Nicolai Petro, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday.
“Ukraine has signed a number of such agreements with European countries, and they basically oblige those countries to [do] nothing, to just look sympathetically at Ukraine’s needs for the next 10 years,” Petro explained. “It’s likely that the US agreement will do the same.”
With Russia advancing on the battlefield, there is a question of how much of Ukraine will still exist for the Americans and Europeans to defend in ten years’ time.
“The countries involved are showing that they intended - intended - to make a long-term security commitment. But, if Kiev falls, well, the details weren’t worked out,” Petro explained.
However, if peace talks did begin, there “would be something to negotiate” for the Kiev regime, and Petro speculated that the agreements are there to help the leaders involved “save face.”
“Zelensky could now sell the idea of negotiating a ceasefire as a victory because ‘look what we’ve already gained,’” Petro said, adding that full “NATO membership is really not” in the cards for Ukraine.
While leaders in Washington and Brussels have continued to insist Ukraine’s membership in NATO is “inevitable” no plan has been presented and In July of last year a communique released on the first day of the NATO leaders summit, included a caveat that Ukraine still needs to make further reforms and will only be invited after “allies agree and conditions are met.”
The decision reportedly left Zelensky “fuming.”
With NATO membership off the table for the foreseeable future, Petro suggests Zelensky should use the security agreements to sell the idea of peace to his people.
“If I were in Kiev reading the tea leaves, I would take what I could. In other words, I would use these agreements and wave them around and suggest to my people… look ‘this is what I’ve accomplished, and now I’m ready to go and talk to Moscow because we have these concrete security guarantees from X and X and X and X,’” Petro explained.
Ukrainian elections were scheduled to take place on May 31, but Zelensky canceled them, citing an amendment to the Ukrainian constitution that was adopted in 2014, signed by then Acting (and unelected) Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov during the height of the Maidan coup.
While Zelensky’s term would normally end on May 21, Petro does not think this will prevent Russia from negotiating with whoever is “the leadership in Ukraine” but added that it will “escalate the tensions within Ukraine itself.”