NATO Chief Calls for 'Robust Security Guarantees' on Ukraine Visit

The question of eventual security guarantees for Ukraine has been front and centre during the latest U.S.-led diplomatic push to broker a peace deal to end the conflict, now in its fourth year.

"Robust security guarantees will be essential and this is what we are now working to define," Mark Rutte said during a visit to Kiev, speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who hosted a meeting of European leaders with Rutte and Zelensky on Monday, said Russia had agreed to some Western security guarantees for Kiev.

But Moscow later cast doubt on any such arrangement. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that discussing security guarantees without Russia was "a utopia, a road to nowhere".

On a visit to Kiev, during which an air raid alert sounded across the city, Rutte said security guarantees were needed to ensure "Russia will uphold any deal and will never ever again attempt to take one square kilometre of Ukraine".

Zelensky said "the guarantees consist of what partners can give Ukraine, as well as what the army in Ukraine should be like" once the war ends.