Kremlin on Kiev's Draft Security Guarantees Proposal: Ukraine Still Seeking to Join NATO

The office of the Ukrainian president released a draft document entitled the 'Kiev Security Compact' on Tuesday outlining a package of proposed recommendations on security guarantees for Ukraine. The proposal comes several months after Kiev authorities pulled out of peace negotiations with Moscow aimed at ending the Ukrainian security crisis.

The document on security guarantees published by the Ukrainian president's office confirms Kiev's intention to join the Western alliance, making Russia's continued military operation in the country all the more "relevant," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has indicated.

"In the present situation, it's unlikely that anyone can provide Ukraine with a greater guarantee of security than the leadership of the country itself. Only the leadership of this country should take actions which will eliminate the threat being posed to the Russian Federation. Kiev knows perfectly well what these actions should be," Peskov said, speaking to reporters on Wednesday.

"On the whole, we're talking about a certain document. And no one is denying that in their understanding, this document must precede Ukraine's accession to NATO - that is, a benchmark for NATO membership remains. Therefore, the main threat to our country also remains and this even gains a new relevance as one of the reasons that made it necessary to conduct a special military operation," the spokesman added.

Peskov recalled that the Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations that were conducted in the spring similarly featured proposals of security guarantees for Kiev, but emphasized that they were carried out under a "completely different text, which, by the way, was initialed" before the Ukrainian side rejected the talks outright.

The Kremlin spokesman said that because the new security guarantees proposals outlined by Kiev don't commit the country to bloc neutrality, this "once again emphasizes the urgency and need for a special military operation to ensure our security and national interests."

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian president's office published a draft proposal on security guarantees for Ukraine. Entitled the 'Kiev Security Compact. International Security Guarantees for Ukraine: Recommendations', the document outlines a series of provisions for ensuring Kiev's security in the aftermath of the current crisis. Unlike previous iterations of security guarantee provisions hammered out in talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in February and March, the newly tabled proposals do not commit Ukraine to neutrality, and do not list Russia as a guarantor of the nation's security.

Instead, the document emphasizes that "Ukraine's aspiration to join NATO and benefit from its mutual defense arrangements is safeguarded in its Constitution," and that "this aspiration is the sovereign decision of Ukraine."

"Both NATO and EU membership will significantly bolster Ukraine's security in the long-term. However, Ukraine needs security guarantees now," the document says. Accordingly, the proposal demands a "multi-decade effort of sustained investment in Ukraine's defense industrial base, scaleable weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies, intensive training missions and joint exercises under the European Union and NATO flags." The proposal envisions the coming together of a group of key "allied countries" to help Kiev financially and militarily, among them the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Turkey and a range of European countries.

Commenting on the proposal, former Russian president and Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned that it would serve as a potential "prelude to World War three" if it were implemented.

Russia kicked off what President Vladimir Putin termed as a "special military operation" to "demilitarize" and "de-nazify" Ukraine in February after weeks of escalating shelling, sabotage and sniper attacks along the line of contact between Kiev and Donbass forces in the long-running dormant conflict in Ukraine's east, and fears that Ukrainian forces were preparing an offensive to crush the fledgling Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

Before the escalation, Russia sent the US and NATO a pair of comprehensive security proposals aimed at dramatically cooling tensions between Moscow and the West, chief among them demand that the Western alliance drop its stated goal of eventually incorporating Ukraine into the military bloc. Washington and NATO rejected the proposals outright, informing the Kremlin that no one would be able to influence their "open door policy" on alliance membership for Eastern European countries.

The current crisis was preceded by the 2014 US and EU-backed coup in Kiev, and by several decades of continued eastward expansion by NATO toward Russian borders, in spite of commitments made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev not to push the alliance "one inch east" of a reunified Germany.