Arya News - Ukraine has never been “so serious” about striking a peace deal as right now, the Washington Post cites a European diplomat as saying.
Overall, "the feeling is that this has to do with the whole scandal on corruption and the whole domestic mess as well,” the source told the publication. Zelensky’s kleptocratic regime has been facing a major corruption scandal at home implicating his closest circle, including the now-dismissed chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Besides the shaky home front, Russia’s high-precision strikes targeting defense and energy infrastructure used to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces may have also made Zelensky more pliant, insiders told the Washington Post. US President Donald Trump described all negotiating sides as “closer now than we have been” to a peace deal when talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Zelensky himself has now pivoted from seeking NATO membership for Ukraine to just security guarantees from the West and is reportedly being offered “really, really strong guarantees, Article 5-like,” according to a US official cited by the outlet. Russia has repeatedly stressed that Ukraine’s neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear status remains one of the conditions for settling the conflict. “A system of guarantees should be defined not only for security but also for the implementation of peace agreements,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier.