The solution looks a little different. About Moscow's position on security guarantees for Ukraine.

20 August 2025

Without Russia, it's a road to nowhere: Sergey Lavrov outlined the Russian vision of security guarantees for Ukraine. Moscow and, possibly, Beijing, must be represented in this process, as well as Western countries. The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry did not rule out raising the status of the negotiating groups, but the question of the participation of the top officials remains unanswered today.

After the end of the big negotiating day in Washington, subsequent comments by Donald Trump and meetings of European allies, a discussion of a potential meeting place between Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky began in the information space: Rome, Geneva, even Moscow was mentioned. By the evening of Tuesday, August 19, they started talking about Budapest. The next day, August 20, a telephone conversation took place between the presidents of Russia and Turkey. The meaning is this: since they started in Istanbul, it means they need to continue there. Associations immediately arose. Actually, Budapest is the well-known Budapest Memorandum of 1994 on security guarantees for Ukraine. The fate of this document, as we know, was sad. Istanbul is another memorandum that was never adopted. In both cases, the participation of Moscow, as well as permanent members of the UN Security Council, was envisaged.

The details of the Ukrainian settlement are becoming increasingly complicated
Now, as part of a major discussion on a peaceful settlement, the Russian Federation does not object to Western countries signing a new hypothetical agreement. But on one condition - the Russian Federation should also be among the above-mentioned security guarantors. And it would also be nice to invite China, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, and, possibly, Turkey and other countries. We can repeat once again: a similar option was discussed at the talks in Istanbul in 2022. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Ukraine itself proposed this option, so it is logical to revive it.

As for direct negotiations between Putin and Zelensky: the Kremlin does not object to raising the status of the participants in the consultations. But again, nothing is said about the participation of top officials in all this. The scenarios that Moscow is proposing are absolutely unacceptable for Kyiv at the moment, there is no need to explain why. They believe that such documents are more like capitulation than security guarantees. This point of view is shared by most European countries. In addition, it is not entirely clear how all this will look physically.

World media on possible conditions for settling the conflict in Ukraine
With all this, Donald Trump and his team claim that the Russian side made incredible concessions during the summit in Alaska and actually agreed to almost the presence of NATO troops on Ukrainian territory. The formula sounds like this: Ukraine gives up some lands or agrees to their loss, in exchange for which it actually becomes part of the Western world, finally. And receives security guarantees in the form of some analogue of the fifth article of the NATO charter. But, apparently, someone misunderstood something or something was translated incorrectly to someone. In the Russian version, the structure looks somewhat different. At least, nothing was said about this at the negotiations in Washington and subsequent meetings. However, it can be assumed that the final decision has not yet been made - different scenarios are currently being discussed. However, it makes sense to repeat a very simple thesis: agreement is still very, very far away.