Ukraine and Allies Agree on Security Guarantee for Peace Proposal

Crucial details on the future security of Ukraine remain unsettled as negotiators seek a deal that Russia will approve.

The United States, Ukraine and Europe have agreed on a NATO-like guarantee for the future security of Ukraine, two U.S. officials said on Monday, as they tried to come up with a revised peace proposal that would deter future aggression and still satisfy Russia.

After two days of talks in Berlin, the American officials told reporters they had resolved or significantly closed gaps on 90 percent of their differences on a 20-point draft agreement to end the war. But they acknowledged that the question of where to draw a new Ukraine-Russia border in the Donbas, where much of the fighting continues, was unresolved.

“For now we have different positions, to be honest,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said at a brief news conference on Monday. “But I think my colleagues have heard my personal position.”

Mr. Zelensky has said it would be impossible for Ukraine to give up territory, mostly in Donetsk, that Russia has not taken on the battlefield. President Trump has told him, officials say, that he should surrender that territory, because he will most likely lose it in coming months if the fighting continues.

Ultimately, the two American officials said, that negotiation would be left to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Mr. Zelensky — and privately American and European officials say that is one of several issues that could derail what have been the most extensive negotiations on ending the fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine just shy of four years ago. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the Trump administration for the negotiations.

Most of the conversations over the past two days, the officials said, focused on the security guarantee, which is intended to deter Russia from invading Ukrainian territory again in coming years. The two officials were vague about the specifics, though they said that Mr. Trump was willing to submit any final agreement on American commitments to Ukraine to the Senate for approval. They did not say whether the guarantee would become a formal treaty — akin to what the United States has with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and other allies — or whether any vote would simply be intended to show a bipartisan commitment.

Mr. Trump has said the United States will not contribute ground troops to a security force. But last summer he offered to patrol the skies and enforce a no-fly zone, in addition to continuing to provide Ukraine with intelligence from U.S. satellites and signals intercepts. Senior officials say that offer still stands.

European officials, who had been skeptical of Mr. Trump’s willingness to play a central role in Ukraine’s security, said they emerged from the meeting impressed.

“In recent days, we have seen significant diplomatic momentum, perhaps the most since the war began on Feb. 24, 2022,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, standing next to Mr. Zelensky during the news conference on Monday. “We now have the opportunity for a genuine peace process for Ukraine.”

But despite the enthusiastic characterization of the talks, there is plenty of reason for caution. The negotiations that were continuing on Monday night with a dinner of European leaders, which Mr. Trump was expected to join by phone or video link, did not include Russia.

And in recent days senior officials have acknowledged that as the draft agreement is amended to address more of Ukraine’s concerns, the more difficult it will be to persuade Mr. Putin to sign on. His strategy so far, senior American officials say, has been to encourage the conversation while continuing to pound Ukraine’s electrical and heating infrastructure with near-nightly missile and drone attacks, in hopes of breaking the will of the Ukrainian population over a long, cold winter.

Mr. Zelensky has been pressing since February, when he had his televised confrontation with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, for ironclad guarantees that Western allies would come to Ukraine’s aid if Russia attacked anew. Mr. Trump was resistant for months.

“Only reliable guarantees can deliver peace,” the Ukrainian leader wrote on social media over the weekend, recalling that the guarantees in a 1994 accord, called the Budapest Memorandum, failed to deter a war that has resulted in more than 1.5 million casualties.

In that agreement, the United States, Britain and Russia itself gave assurances to protect Ukraine — later repeated in separate agreements with France and China — in return for Ukraine’s agreement to give up old Soviet nuclear weapons that were based in its territory.

But the accord was vaguely worded. It was not clear what kind of aggression would spark a response, or what form that response would take, ranging from a strongly worded diplomatic protest, to providing arms, to sending in troops and air support to counter an invasion. At the time, it was hard to imagine that Russia itself would be the invader, though that is exactly what happened 28 years later.

After more than eight hours of meetings on Sunday and Monday between Mr. Zelensky; Steve Witkoff, the special envoy for Mr. Trump; and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, the Ukrainian leader emerged saying he was heartened by progress. But he made clear that he was not ready to embrace the final document that will have to go to Mr. Putin.

Mr. Zelensky said on Monday that “before taking certain steps on the battlefield” — an apparent reference to withdrawing troops and allowing part of Donetsk to be a free-trade zone — “there must be “a clear understanding of what the security guarantees will be.”

He noted that because the United States was refusing to offer Ukraine membership in NATO, a position that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also took, he would need security guarantees even stronger than those afforded to NATO members.

In a statement, 12 European leaders laid out some of the details on Monday evening. They said that under the draft, the West would “provide sustained and significant support to Ukraine” to sustain a peacetime military of about 800,000 forces, which would be both the largest and most battle-tested in Europe.

It said a “European-led ‘multinational force Ukraine’” would be assembled from “willing nations,” which were not named. France and Britain have previously said they would contribute, and Poland and others are expected to. But it is not clear from the wording of the statement whether the force would be based inside Ukrainian territory — which has long been an issue of contention with Russia.

The United States, it said, would lead a “cease-fire monitoring and verification mechanism” to provide early warning of future attacks. The two U.S. officials said there would also be a set of procedures laid out to de-escalate in case of violations.

And the European leaders described a “legally binding commitment” to take steps “to restore peace and security in the case of a future armed attack.” It said those could involve “armed force, intelligence and logistical assistance, economic and diplomatic actions.”

The last sentence gets to Mr. Zelensky’s fear: that even the most watertight commitment does not require armed intervention on Ukraine’s behalf.

That approach is based on a bet that Mr. Putin cares more about blocking any further expansion of NATO, especially the inclusion of Ukraine, than he does about any specific commitments the Western allies may make to the country.

American officials said they were also developing a new proposal about the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest. Under the discussions now underway, half its output would go to Russia and half to Ukraine. It is currently in “cold shutdown,’’ producing virtually no electricity, because of fighting that has been raging within miles of the plant, at times hitting the conventional electrical systems that maintain its nuclear cooling systems. But it is unclear who would own the plant itself, which was built by Ukraine and is now occupied by Russia.

Mr. Zelensky also met on Monday with Alexander Stubb, the Finnish president, whose country is among NATO’s newest members. Finland, too, lost territory to the Soviet Union, and Mr. Stubb has developed an unusually close relationship with Mr. Trump.

Other European leaders, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Secretary General Mark Rutte of NATO, were scheduled to join Mr. Zelensky on Monday evening.

Leaders from Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden, as well as Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive branch, were all scheduled to arrive in Berlin by Monday evening for the dinner at the chancellery with Mr. Merz, Mr. Starmer, Mr. Macron and Mr. Rutte.

The diplomatic gathering was put together hastily by German, Ukrainian and U.S. officials as pressure mounts to find a compromise to end the war.

The flurry of diplomatic activity comes after American negotiators presented a 28-point peace plan last month that Ukrainians dismissed as being too aligned with Russian interests. European leaders did not dismiss that plan outright, but they have supported Ukraine’s counterproposal, which would hold on to the territory it currently controls

Highlighting broader European efforts to restrict Russia and its allies, the European Union announced on Monday that it had sanctioned several people and companies involved in Russian oil sales. The bloc also said that it had made it easier to place sanctions on Belarus, a key ally of Russia.

Reporting was contributed by Jeanna Smialek from Brussels and Maria Varenikova from Kyiv, Ukraine.

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