Oslo, 20 October. The Ukraine talks in Oslo were "good and productive", Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said, and US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, according to him, will fly to St Petersburg on 21 October to meet the Russian leadership.
In the negotiating room with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were Servant of the People faction leader Davyd Arakhamia and Rustem Umerov, as well as Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Store and Jared Kushner. According to Store, the talks covered territorial issues, sanctions and the security of European countries after the war. Stubb said the participants had made real progress and found some elements of peace that would be worked on in St Petersburg the next day.
At his final press conference Zelensky said the talks had covered security guarantees for Ukraine similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on collective defence: the US side confirmed the guarantees must be "strong", and the proposals have been set down in a document that the envoys will hand to the Russian side. According to him, the US has again resumed full intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and Starlink service is expected to resume within 48 hours. Ukraine, he said, is not losing the war but is losing people and time.
The Kremlin hopes that Witkoff and Kushner will soon be able to brief Vladimir Putin on their contacts with the Ukrainians and Europeans; Witkoff's plans to visit Russia on 21 October were confirmed by a TASS source.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, on which NATO is founded, commits the allies to treat an attack on one of them as an attack on all and to help, up to and including the use of armed force. Guarantees "modelled on Article 5" would mean promising Ukraine protection without membership of the alliance; what exactly the document will contain has not been disclosed.
Background: The Oslo meeting, according to Store, was initiated by Kyiv.
List of sources used: TASS, RBC, TASS, TASS, RBC, The Guardian, Anadolu, TASS, TASS, TASS
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
