Britain will not give Nato-style security guarantees to Ukraine to secure a peace settlement, Dominic Raab said on Wednesday, despite a request from Ukrainian negotiators.

The Deputy Prime Minister said the UK would not act “unilaterally” to offer such assurances, while Downing Street and Ministry of Defence sources also declined to back the idea.

It follows a Ukrainian negotiator saying publicly that the West should act as the country’s security “guarantor” with a commitment similar to Nato’s “Article Five” promise.

That article says that Nato, an international military alliance, considers “an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all allies”.

Others will rally

It means if any of the 30 Nato member states is attacked, the others will rally to its side. But Ukraine is not in Nato, with the West not sending in troops after the Russian invasion.

Asked about the UK being an independent guarantor of Ukraine, Mr Raab, who was foreign secretary until last September, struck a cautious tone.

“It would depend on what precisely is involved. We have been very clear we are not going to engage Russia in direct military confrontation. Ukraine is not a Nato member,” he said.

“We will consider anything that President Zelensky says he needs very carefully. But we are not going to, I think, replicate unilaterally the Nato commitments that apply to Nato members.”

The Prime Minister’s spokesman declined to comment on specific elements of the negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials. Defence sources did likewise.

The position amounted to an initial rebuttal of a call issued by Davyd Arakhamia, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, for countries – especially the West – to guarantee Ukraine’s security in any peace pact.

Mr Arakhamia had said: “We want an international mechanism of security guarantees where guarantor countries will act in a similar way to Nato’s Article Five – and even more firmly.”

Pledge to help

The US, UK, China, France, Germany, Canada, Israel, Italy, Poland and Turkey were all named as potential guarantors by the Ukrainian side.

One idea floated by the Ukrainians was a pledge to come to the country’s aid within three days if it came under any sort of attack.

The UK, like other Nato members, has rejected calls to implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine or to deploy troops in the country for fear of entering an all-out conflict with Russia.

Any security guarantee which could result in those consequences seems unlikely.

But it remains possible in theory that Western countries could vow to impose similar punishments as seen in the past two months as terms in any ceasefire.

Boris Johnson on Wednesday played down hopes of an imminent breakthrough in the talks between Russia and Ukraine, calling into question Moscow’s motives.

“I have my doubts about the genuine willingness of Putin to cooperate,” Mr Johnson said to MPs during a liaison committee appearance, referencing the Russian president.

Mr Johnson rejected calls to lift sanctions if a ceasefire was announced, arguing that such a move “goes straight into Putin’s playbook”.