Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Ihor Zhovkva told the agency in an interview Interfax-Ukraine about the state of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU, the implementation of the Ukrainian Peace Formula and a visit to the USA.
In the last days of 2023, what can you remember as its most important events?
This is what happened the week before last - a really important decision by the European Council to open accession negotiations for Ukraine.
Experts, as you know, talked about a 20-30% probability of this literally at the beginning of that momentous day. And here the great merit of the President of Ukraine. He was not just sure of it. He did everything for this - possible and impossible.
26 leaders of the European Union, as well as the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission, clearly supported Ukraine's position.
And Ukraine has done all its homework before that. After November 8, after receiving the report of the European Commission, remember, Ursula von der Leyen said that 90% of the obligations had been fulfilled. By the time of the European Council summit, the remaining 9,5 percent had been completed.
Second. I believe that we have not only retained this strong international support. What do we see at the end of the year? Dialogue with the Global South continues. I am not even talking about the numerous calls of the President of Ukraine to his partner in Asia.
Will there be a "Ukraine-Latin America" summit next year?
I'm sure he will be there next year. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the date now, because, as you can see, the President of Argentina has a lot of domestic political issues.
Therefore, the second achievement for you is the expansion of the international coalition of support that supports Ukraine not only in words.
And here is the third. Armed support of Ukraine is going steadily. We formed five coalitions and each coalition was formed thanks to the work of the president.
I think another important achievement is that the issue of security guarantees has already moved into the subject plane. If at the beginning of the year it was just talk, now we already have a permanent, stable process.
And one more thing — the Peace Formula. Again, let's remember that at the beginning of the year, after the president announced it at the G20 summit in Bali, it was only an initiative. Today, at the end of the year, we already have three rounds of negotiations at the level of national security advisors.
Ten meetings here in Kyiv under the leadership of the head of the Yermak Office with ambassadors, at the last meeting there were 86 representatives.
Let's return to the Eurocouncil and its decision. Is there a danger that Viktor Orbán will try to use the so-called right of veto more than once?
Such a tool was present, but we saw how it can be avoided. You and I are not yet members of the European Union, and we cannot predict how EU leaders will behave. But we have seen that it can work. You and I all saw Prime Minister Orbán's statement yesterday.
So that he is ready to meet, he only asks about what. What do you think?
He knows perfectly well what he is talking about. I do not have the right to reveal all the details, but it is not the first time that the President of Ukraine has invited the Prime Minister of Hungary to Ukraine. What about? About our bilateral relations, which is a wide spectrum and it is not limited to the issues of national minorities. Let me remind you that the framework law was adopted in accordance with the recommendations of the European Commission. Then, at the request of the Venice Commission, we implemented all but one of the recommendations.
We can talk about the economy, we can talk about transit between neighboring states. We will certainly prepare this visit and the teams will be working. Nothing better than face-to-face negotiations has been invented in diplomacy.
What will be the next steps? The framework of negotiations must be approved...
Now our government, in particular the relevant vice prime minister, should concentrate on technical and bureaucratic work — interaction with the European Commission. If we raise the November 8th decision with you, it says that the negotiating framework (actually the negotiating directives) will be approved, provided that the observations that were made in the November 8th report are met.
It is set for March 2024. We have already, to a large extent, fulfilled this. We must open an official screening — an analysis of the compliance of our legislation with the legislation of the European Union. Before that, we had a so-called self-screening.
How much confidence or faith do you have that the EU will solve the issue of financial support?
There is confidence. There is a political solution. The amount we all know, 50 billion euros, will be allocated to Ukraine. Nuances in technology. Why was this decision postponed until the informal meeting of the European Council on February 1? As far as I understand, the leaders failed to write out the toolkit.
There are several options. for example, from the point of view of using the common budget of the European Union - it is not only about Ukraine - these are changes to the budget of the European Union. This is the first option.
If it doesn't work out, the other option is bilateral agreements. The work of the donor platform continues, for example, where our government officials work together with the European Commission.
According to the Peace Formula, to be honest, sometimes one gets the impression that the process is developing, but slowly.
I do not agree with you that the process is slow. Let's go back to earlier this year, when this was just an announced initiative by the president at the G20 summit.
We started by writing down these 10 points of understanding. It was important for us to come to a common understanding because at the time, remember, there were several alternative peace plans. There was Chinese, there was African, there was Brazilian.
What do we have at the end of the year? The Brazilian plan disappeared. There is no longer an African plan.
Now the Ukrainian Peace Formula has actually become the only non-alternative plan for bringing peace to Ukraine. After all, the war is taking place on the territory of Ukraine, so the plan can only be Ukrainian.
Together with our partners, we began to prescribe the understanding of each of the points. We currently have 10 working groups and a work plan for each item.
When we finish all this, we will go to the Global Formula Peace Summit with a complete package. What is it needed for? It will start the process. And after that, measures will begin, on each of the 10 points already at the level of ministers, national security advisers. And we will already start implementing the Peace Formula.
We are already clear: India is in the process, Saudi Arabia is in the process, South Africa is in the process, Brazil is in the process.
Just because of the president's visit to Latin America, you and I will receive 5 more countries that will take their part in the work of the Peace Formula - Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina.
What could be the role of the UN in this process? The President recently spoke with her Secretary General…
So. The President reminded that we wanted the UN to be present at each of the points, reminded that we wanted a UN representative to be at each meeting, at least of the national security advisors, and asked that a UN representative be this time in Davos
The role of the UN is very important. Among such important and global points as food security and environmental security, is there a point that includes Russia's violation of the UN Charter? How can we do without the UN here?
Can the formula be brought before the General Assembly?
The instrument of the resolution of the UN General Assembly is not going anywhere, we can continue to use it, of course. It's effective, it's important, and it shows the level of support.
The 143 votes we received a year and a half ago for the resolution confirming the sovereignty of Ukraine did not disappear either. I can say that there may be even more of them. Actually, we want the participants of the global summit to be a sufficiently high number.
According to the security guarantee process. There was information in Great Britain that the negotiation process is already at an advanced stage. I don't know what to call it - guarantees, assurances?
We call these "guarantees". And we will make sure that our partners also adhere to this promise.
We remember the Budapest Memorandum, where it was also first about guarantees, and then...
The word "assurance" will definitely not appear in any of our documents. We have agreed with our negotiation partners that we do not comment on the course and content of the negotiations in the press for obvious reasons. But if you are asking about Great Britain, yes, there are really good dynamics there. Just a few days ago, I held another round of consultations with the British side, they spoke very objectively.
Again, I can't tell you the content, but the UK is on a good track, just as, in principle, we have opened negotiations with all the GXNUMX countries. But not only. For example, with the Netherlands, too, we have good dynamics of such negotiations.
We want it to be a legally binding document, we want it to go through the appropriate approval procedures in each of the countries.
You mentioned the Budapest Memorandum, we certainly don't need another one or seven more Budapest Memorandums. Unfortunately, this document did not work either during Russia's aggression against Ukraine in 2014, or during Russia's full-scale aggression in 2022.
If you were present at the meeting with the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Johnson, how would you characterize this first contact of the president with the Republicans?
A very good, warm, working meeting. It was indeed the first contact of the president, although not the first contact from the Ukrainian side. Undoubtedly, the speaker of the House of Representatives was interested in how Ukraine sees development on the battlefield.
And, of course, we heard from both Mr. Johnson and representatives of his party that they are in favor of providing appropriate support to Ukraine, financial support. We have not heard from anyone that they do not support her.
We do not interfere in the domestic political debate in the USA, this is a matter for the United States of America. But I think we have every chance of getting a very good positive result after the holiday break in both Houses.
As far as I understand, during the trip to the USA there was a meeting with the Vice President of the USA, Kamala Harris. Why did it take place and what was the mood at this meeting?
She is the vice president of the United States and, by the way, the head of the Senate. It was a very good meeting, she was also interested in hearing the president's assessment of the situation in Ukraine. And, of course, we discussed the whole range of issues that we talked about during the visit to the United States of Ukraine.
Do your interlocutors have an understanding of how strong the influence of Donald Trump himself is today and how destructive it can be, I would say, to our relationship?
There is no understanding yet. I wouldn't say "destructive". Let me remind you that the President of Ukraine had contacts with President Trump when he was president. Therefore, no, I would not use such words.
Again, we will respect the choice of the American people and we will certainly work with the president-elect.
We will work with bipartisanship, we will work with Congress, we will work with the White House, we will work with the United States Government.
After all, the question here is not limited to military aid. We have good contacts, for example, between the Minister of Energy of Ukraine and the Secretary of Energy of the United States.
Therefore, we have a wide range of issues of bilateral cooperation with the States. We do not stop for an hour or a minute and we are sure that our partners from the United States of America will not stop either.
How realistic, from your point of view, are the currently discussed options for the confiscation of seized Russian money?
A very important question. Here, the "Big Seven" must make a joint coordinated decision. You know that some European countries are trying to practically start this process, for example Belgium.
We talked about it definitely in the United States of America. Let's get those frozen assets up and running now somehow. Let it be fast recovery, let it be some social projects such as the reconstruction of liberated territories, bomb shelters, schools, and so on.
This requires appropriate legislative decisions in these countries. At the EU level, this requires, for example, a joint EU directive.
Another question is China. It seems to me that the relationship is at a "stop".
Ukraine is ready for dialogue with China. Let me remind you that there were conversations between the president of Ukraine and the leader of China, Xi Jinping. There was a telephone conversation already during open Russian aggression. Before this conversation, the representative of China participated in the meeting of the Peace Formula.
We are ready for dialogue. Much depends on China's position as a large country, as an important country. Again, we're back to where we started. There is nothing better than dialogue.
Next year will be very difficult for us from a financial point of view. How financially secure are the diplomatic services?
It seems to me that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a pretty good budget for next year. I would very much like the return from representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I am not talking only about ambassadors, to be as highly responsible.
The President, as the head of the diplomatic service of Ukraine, requires the same efficiency from every employee of the diplomatic service - be it a department head in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an ambassador or a deputy minister.
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