Good afternoon, dear attendees, dear journalists!
Steve, Jared, thank you very much for coming. And today we are also joined by representatives of our European leaders – Jonathan, Emmanuel, and Günter. Thank you all very much for being here.
Our team, dear attendees, dear journalists,
Today, we had three rounds of negotiations, and all of them were very substantive. First of all, I want to thank Steve and Jared for being here with us today. Thank you for coming, and we are grateful to the President of the United States that you are here in Kyiv today. Today, you worked even better than the Patriot systems for our citizens here in the capital. Thank you. Please come visit more often, and our people will have a chance – a chance to live a little. We really had good discussions. And while we can sometimes joke about Patriot, we nevertheless understand that this is a very pressing issue and a very important one for us.
Thank you for devoting sufficient attention today to the winter period and to all the challenges that may indeed arise. We very much hope that we will be able to reach arrangements with our American partners in this domain, and we hope for the support of European partners if the war continues into the winter. And for now, that is how things look – nevertheless, the teams today assess our future possibilities positively. So, if the war continues into the winter, we are counting heavily on the winter package, which I discussed in great detail today with Steve, Jared, and our European partners. We are very much counting on this kind of support – both for air defense and the energy sector. You know that we are counting on substantial volumes of American LNG and the ability to utilize them. I think it's all up to us, and our partners support this.
I am grateful that, after such a long pause in any format of negotiations – and we may prefer certain formats of negotiations, but nevertheless, it is worse when there are no formats of negotiations at all – I want to recognize the role of Steve and Jared in restarting the negotiation process today. They were in Russia, and I think it would be right for Jared and Steve to speak in detail about Russia. I think they will be able to answer your questions later.
But it is important that the American team met with the head of Russia, and today with me as well, and that we discussed all the possibilities – the possibilities for restoring the process. We had a trilateral meeting, as you remember, and this meeting of national security advisors. And I think we will all do everything possible – all sides – to restore these negotiations.
The territorial issue remains a relevant one, in my view, and I am giving you my opinion. This does not mean that we spent a very long time discussing it, but we had the opportunity to talk it through as well. And I think that, in any case, such complex issues are resolved… I still hold the view that such complex issues can only be resolved at the level of leaders. But the main thing is that today we have the opportunity to discuss everything – security guarantees, and we are indeed talking about Ukraine’s future. And we all want – we stand in solidarity here – to end the war as soon as possible. We are talking about the prosperity plan. We are talking not only about security guarantees, but also about economic guarantees for Ukraine – to recover and rebuild. We all understand the challenges that lie ahead once the war ends. We are discussing them among ourselves; we understand them. Our army must be strong, and for us this is a key security guarantee. And all of this requires resources.
You understand this perfectly well, we all understand it, and that is why the guarantees for Ukraine must be strong and clear. I would put it this way – guarantees that war will not return. In any case, we must not fear any future challenges.
I think it is also important that European colleagues joined us for the third part of our negotiations, and we agreed that Ukraine, Europe, and the United States will meet in the near future. I don’t know where the meeting will take place – in Europe, in the United States, or perhaps here again, Steve – as I understand it, he liked our train – so perhaps in Ukraine again. But we are open in any case. Glad to meet with you. Thank you for being here today. Always welcome.
