The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, asked this Monday during a meeting with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz“legal guarantees” that protect Ukraine once morest the Russian threat.
“It is in Ukraine where today the future European security architecture is decided, of which our country is an integral part,” Zelensky said at a joint news conference with Scholz.
He added that he discussed with Scholz “the need to establish specific legal guarantees that can protect Ukraine”.
The Ukrainian president criticized the decision of some embassies to transfer their staff to the west of the country amid the increase in tension with Russia and affirmed that “if something happens in one part”, it will have repercussions throughout the country.
“There is no Western Ukraine, there is a whole Ukraine”Zelensky said. He also called on the deputies who have left the country due to the news of an early Russian invasion, to return within 24 hours.
“I think they all have to come back or we, the state, will draw serious conclusions,” he said. As for his family, he denied rumors that he too has left Ukraine.
“My family is always with me. It is always with Ukraine,” Zelensky assured. The daily Ukrainskaya Pravda previously wrote that Ukraine’s oligarchs and businessmen have started leaving the country en masse following the latest US warnings of an approaching Russian attack.
According to the newspaper, only on Sunday, February 13, regarding 20 charter flights were chartered for take rich Ukrainian men and members of their families abroad. “They have to come back with tens of thousands of people who work for them and for the state,” Zelensky said of businessmen leaving the country these days.
NATO plans
On the other hand, the German ChancellorOlaf Scholz, assured this Monday that, currently, there are no “plans” to admit Ukraine to Western alliances like NATO, in full tension with Russia, which does not want Kiev to enter the group.
“That is why it is somewhat peculiar to observe that The Russian government is making something that is practically not on the agenda the subject of major political problems”the chancellor has indicated following meeting with the president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, in Kiev.
“This is, following all, the challenge we face now. The fact that something it’s not an issue now it’s becoming an issue“He continued, according to the German news agency DPA.
Within the framework of the talks – which have lasted almost two hours, longer than had been planned – Scholz has offered Ukraine other 150 million euros in economic aid, which are added to another 150 million already committed but that Berlin has not yet paid. In total, Berlin has allocated more than 2,000 million euros to Ukraine.
Scholz, who has remarked that no country in the world has given more economic aid to Kiev in the last eight years than Germany, He has indicated that he has visited the country “in difficult times”, while reiterating that Germany “firmly” supports Ukraine.
Zelenski, for his part, has indicated that he has discussed with Scholz the need to include specific legal guarantees to protect Ukraine in Europe’s security architecture.
“The issue of security challenges and the peace process has been the main topic of our talks”has confirmed the Ukrainian president, who has insisted that it is in his country “where the future of the European security architecture is being decided, of which our State is a part”.
In this sense, he has argued that Ukraine is a “reliable” ally and “a true outpost of democracy in the region.” “Without Ukraine, the creation of a functioning security architecture in Europe is impossible,” he concluded, according to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
