VILNIUS, Jan 25 (Reuters) – A U.S. document on security guarantees for Ukraine is completely ready and Kyiv is waiting for a time and place for it to be signed, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, indicating that weekend talks with Russia in Abu Dhabi made some progress.
“For us, security guarantees are first and foremost guarantees of security from the United States. The document is 100% ready, and we are waiting for our partners to confirm the date and place when we will sign it,” Zelenskiy told a news conference during a visit to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
“The document will then be sent for ratification to the U.S. Congress and the Ukrainian parliament,” he said.
On Friday and Saturday, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators held their first trilateral meeting including U.S. mediators in Abu Dhabi to discuss Washington’s framework for ending the almost four-year-old war, but no deal emerged.
However, Moscow and Kyiv both said they were open to further dialogue and more discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi, a U.S. official told reporters immediately after the weekend talks.
“(In Abu Dhabi) the 20-point (U.S.) plan and problematic issues are being discussed. There were many problematic issues, but now there are fewer,” Zelenskiy said.
He said Moscow wants to do everything possible to get Ukraine to abandon eastern regions Moscow has been unable to capture since its full-scale invasion that triggered the war. But Kyiv, he said, had not budged from its position that Ukraine’s territorial integrity must be upheld.
“These are two fundamentally different positions – Ukraine’s and Russia’s. The Americans are trying to find a compromise,” Zelenskiy said, adding that all sides must be prepared to compromise, including the Americans.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Andrius Sytas in Vilnuis; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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