WASHINGTON, January 28. /TASS/. Russia's consent to potential security guarantees for Ukraine from the West has yet to be achieved, US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio has admitted.
"I think you could argue they're agreed to from our side of the equation. There's obviously a Russian dynamic at play here," he said at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting, commenting on the issue of providing Kiev with possible Western security guarantees in the event of a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. "Of course, any security guarantees would come into play after the [end of the] conflict <...>, so there's that component to it," Rubio stressed.
"The broader point I was making is that in all these discussions about security guarantees that people are putting out there… it's pretty clear that the only security guarantee that people keep pushing forward [in Kiev and some Western countries] is one that involves a deployment of some European troops on the ground, but with a very strong US backstop," the secretary of state pointed out. According to him, this is being discussed within NATO. In Rubio’s view, European nations "don't have the capabilities of doing a real security guarantee without a US backstop." He called on Europe to build up its military capabilities in this regard.