“The peace agreement will be bad, very bad, or it won’t happen at all,” Arahamia said

A peace agreement to establish a ceasefire on Ukrainian territory will be either bad, very bad, or will not happen at all.

This was stated by the head of the Servant of the People faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Davyd Arakhamia, at the forum “Ukraine and the World Ahead 2026.”

“We understand—everyone who thinks understands this (although there are still many people who believe we should insist on some kind of fantastical terms of an agreement)—that it (the peace agreement — Ed.) will be either bad, or very bad, or it will not exist at all,” he said.

Answering a question about the likelihood of reaching an agreement at the current stage of negotiations, Arakhamia noted that under the current pressure from the Americans—although it is greater on Ukraine than on Russia—there is a chance. Without U.S. involvement, however, there would be no chance of an agreement, only a military path to resolving the problem.

“In fact, one major issue remains—more precisely, two. We need security guarantees, with a 100% guarantee that the war will not come back to us. This has been the case since Istanbul as well: security guarantees are Ukraine’s number one need. And they want Donbas. And here we have a red line—we cannot give up our Donbas,” the head of the Servant of the People faction said.

In his view, an analogue of NATO’s Article 5 is weak, because it assumes that in the event of military aggression, NATO countries must meet within 72 hours and hold consultations.

“I’m sorry, but on February 24, within 72 hours we almost lost the country. That does not suit us. There must be specifics: how many weapons, what kind of weapons, how large our army is, how it is funded, what so-called deterrence packages we have—missiles and so on,” Arakhamia explained.

“I hope that among the thinking audience we have in this hall today, there are no people who do not understand that no one will fight for Ukrainians in Ukraine with foreign soldiers—that only we ourselves can be our own guarantors. We will only need assistance and a strong army,” he added.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Washington is looking for a compromise solution regarding the withdrawal of Ukrainian Armed Forces troops from Donbas, as envisaged by the peace plan.

The press has also reported that the United States is pressuring Zelensky to agree to withdraw troops from Donbas, while Russia would be required to pull its forces back from the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.