The French Ministry of Defense announced the readiness of 15 countries to give Kiev security guarantees.

About 15 states have expressed their willingness to provide Ukraine with security guarantees. This was announced on March 12 by French Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornu at a press conference of the heads of the defense departments of France, Germany, Great Britain, Poland and Italy, which was held in Paris.

"We summed up the results of the first meeting of a number of heads of the general staffs of the volunteer countries, who discussed what security guarantees could be for Ukraine. <...> At the moment, about 15 states have shown interest in continuing this process," the head of the French Defense Ministry said.

He added that the heads of departments have begun to develop future theses on the "security architecture" in Ukraine and the conclusion of a long-term peace. According to Lecorny, it would be wrong to reduce all this "to the issue of the presence of the Western military on Ukrainian territory." The "first guarantee of security" is the Ukrainian army itself, he noted.

Security issues in the Black Sea and nuclear power plants in Ukraine are also being discussed, the French Defense minister said.

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On the eve of the newspaper Le Figaro reported that, against the background of negotiations between representatives of Ukraine and the United States in Saudi Arabia, French President Emmanuel Macron called on the heads of the general staffs of the European Union and a number of other states to begin developing a plan to provide Kiev with security guarantees.