Ukrainian and US leaders Volodymyr Zelenskyi and Joe Biden will sign a bilateral security agreement in Italy on the eve of the Peace Summit. The summit will be held on June 15-16 in Switzerland.
The Financial Times, with reference to unnamed US officials, writes that the agreement was concluded in recent weeks against the backdrop of growing tensions between Kyiv and Washington.
One of Zelenskyʼs appointed high-ranking government officials, who spoke to the publication about US-Ukraine relations, told the publication: "We are further apart than at any time since the beginning of the war. Itʼs very, very stressful."
Disappointment with Joe Biden was echoed in Zelenskyʼs recent statement, when he reprimanded his American colleague for wanting to participate in a Democratic Party fundraiser in California instead of the Peace Summit in Switzerland. He called this decision "not very strong".
Several Ukrainian officials said Kyivʼs frustration with the lack of US support for the top-level peace summit initiative is just one of many points of contention with Washington and other Western partners.
More than a dozen current and former Ukrainian officials and diplomats of the G7 countries in Kyiv, who spoke to the publication, point to a number of controversial issues.
Among them are the six-month delay by Congress in approving American military aid, the expected lack of significant progress on the way to Ukraineʼs NATO membership at the Alliance summit in Washington in July, the Biden administrationʼs ban on Kyivʼs use of American weapons for strikes on Russian territory; as well as strikes by Ukrainian drones on Russian oil refineries.
Other tense moments include the dismissal of Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny in February and Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov in May.
There are also disagreements about how to achieve victory and what can be considered a victory or the end of a war in general.
Several members of Zelenskyiʼs government have said that they are becoming concerned about the methods used by the Ukrainian president to communicate with the United States. One said Zelensky was "very annoyed" by Biden, and added that they were concerned about "open provocation" by the White House. "Donʼt bite the hand that feeds you," said an unnamed Ukrainian government official.
- On May 29, The New York Times wrote that US President Joe Biden is considering the possibility of canceling his ban for Ukraine to strike with American weapons on the territory of the aggressor country, that is, Russia.