The proposed ‘Kyiv Security Compact’ and the Western network of advisers and consultancy firms helping to steer Ukraine’s foreign policy choices

On the 13 September President Volodymyr Zelensky's office published a draft set of security guarantees that, if agreed, would commit Ukraine’s allies to legally binding large-scale weapons transfers and multi-decade investment in the country’s defences. The nine-page Kyiv Security Compact was prepared by a Working Group On International Security Guarantees for Ukraine co-chaired by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelensky's presidential administration. Zelensky said the package - which called for Western countries to provide "political, financial, military and diplomatic resources" to boost Kyiv's ability to defend itself - should form the basis of a new security settlement for Ukraine.

The Compact claims that, “these will be the first such guarantees of the 21st century and can lay the foundations for a new security order in Europe”. This model involves formalising guarantees that the international community would in future follow similar steps to those taken in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war to supply a state with all the resources necessary to prevail, should it experience an incursion. But crucially it goes further than this, committing those states giving the guarantees to do all in their power to expand Ukraine’s military capability over decades. It is a recipe for massive increases in military spending across Europe.