OREANDA-NEWS The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, Mark Rutte, allowed the provision of security guarantees to Russia after the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. This is reported by the Reuters news agency.

"Basically, everything we are doing under American leadership is uniting Ukrainians, Russians, and the United States, obviously in close coordination with our allies, to make sure that we can end the conflict (...) I think it is very important to ask how we can be sure that this is not a repeat of the Minsk agreements, and that a deal has been concluded. And there are very strong security guarantees," the Secretary General replied to the relevant question.

At the same time, Rutte noted that among the topics of the peaceful settlement of the conflict, many issues are being discussed, including the territorial aspect.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that many of the achievements of the negotiations on Ukraine — starting with the negotiations in Istanbul in 2022 — were crossed out in order to justify Kiev's hostile course towards Russia. He paid special attention to the issue of security guarantees, pointing out that they have been turned into an instrument of military assistance to Ukraine and the continuation of the anti-Russian course.