Only NATO membership, Article 5 guarantees and defense partnership are effective security guarantees - Poroshenko
Member of Parliament and leader of the European Solidarity party Petro Poroshenko believes that the negotiations on security guarantees for Ukraine, which have been ongoing for the past seven years, have been fruitless, while the options for joining NATO, the guarantees of NATO's Article 5, and a strategic defense partnership are workable.
"We need to stop talking about the fact that we are conducting intense negotiations on security guarantees. You have been conducting them for seven years, especially actively in the last four years. You have signed 40 security agreements. Why aren't you using them now? Where are your security guarantees that you were proud of, waving pieces of paper and saying, now we have all the security guarantees? Because these are not security guarantees," he said in an interview with journalist Vitaly Portnikov on the Espresso TV channel.
The politician believes that the concluded security agreements "are not legally binding" and "even worse than the Budapest Memorandum"
Poroshenko, who served as President of Ukraine in 2014-2019 and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2009-2010, noted that there are only three types of effective security guarantees, and one of them is full membership in NATO.
"I am proud that I introduced the obligation of NATO membership into the Constitution. Imagine if we did not have these constitutional norms now... I am finally happy that I heard from Zelenskuy... "we will not change the Constitution regarding Ukraine's future membership in NATO." Why? Because this is the only form (of security guarantees - IF-U)," he stressed.
When asked about the fact that US President Donald Trump is now against Ukraine's membership in NATO, the politician recalled that he had negotiated with him in 2017 and was able to obtain lethal weapons from him at that time. "Trump is a person with whom you can reach any agreement during negotiations. Form a negotiating team. [Ukraine] has no one to communicate with the White House right now," Poroshenko noted.
"The second position. Two countries have these security formats - Japan and South Korea. This is an agreement on strategic defense partnership. Do you know what its main characteristic is? This means that units of the United States armed forces are located in the territory of Japan and South Korea. And this is an effective form outside NATO," the politician said.
He called the third option for security guarantees the option of Sweden and Finland, when the guarantees of NATO Article 5 were extended to them before official accession. "Remember, Turkey blocked, Hungary blocked, then there were some other positions in Sweden, and it was in Finland. And then NATO made a decision. This means when we will receive a 100% security guarantee for the period before accession," Poroshenko said.
He also noted that the main component of such guarantees are the military contingents of the allies on the territory of Ukraine. "Boots on the ground. The Americans are now refusing - then we should have military units and contingents of Great Britain, France and eleven other countries that have agreed to send their military contingents to ensure the security of the achieved process... This is not an easy task. But the survival and existence of our state depends on this, in what form it will be preserved," Poroshenko said.
