The United States wants the European Union, rather than NATO, to give security guarantees to Ukraine after a ceasefire deal with Russia is reached, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said on Sunday.
"The plan is for the European Union to provide security, not NATO," Bessent said in an interview with CBS News.
According to the US official, Ukraine's Zelensky was urged to sign an economic agreement with the US in exchange for security support, but he rejected the opportunity last Friday at a meeting with US President Trump, which Bessent called a "tragedy."
"All Zelensky had to do was come in and sign this economic agreement. And again, show no daylight, no daylight between Ukrainian people and the American people. And he chose to blow that up," he emphasized, adding that the mineral deal with Kiev is not "on the table" at present.
In January, The Telegraph newspaper reported that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron were discussing sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine after peace is secured. The Washington Post reported that European countries were considering deploying 25,000-30,000 troops to Ukraine.
Paris' idea of sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine is a gamble that is fraught with direct confrontation on the battlefield, including that of nuclear powers, the director of the First European Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, Artyom Studennikov, told Sputnik in February.
Moreover, the deployment of European forces in Ukraine without Moscow's consent would be a direct participation in the conflict on Kiev's side, he said.