Putin agreed to ‘NATO-style’ security guarantees for Ukraine? Top US envoy's 'game-changing' revelation ahead of Trump-Zelensky meet
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Putin agreed to ‘NATO-style’ security guarantees for Ukraine? Top US envoy's 'game-changing' revelation ahead of Trump-Zelensky meet")
Putin agreed to ‘NATO-style’ security guarantees for Ukraine? Top US envoy's 'game-changing' revealation ahead of Trump-Zelensky meet Photograph: (Reuters)
Putin reportedly agreed to US-backed “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine, similar to NATO’s Article 5, during talks with Trump, offering defence assurances without Ukraine formally joining the alliance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine from the United States as part of a potential peace deal during his summit with President Donald Trump, senior envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN. “We agreed to robust security guarantees that I would describe as game-changing,” Witkoff said, likening the arrangement to NATO’s Article 5 protection. He explained that this mechanism would offer Ukraine defence commitments similar to NATO’s collective security clause, without the country formally joining the alliance, a long-standing Russian red line.
How would the security guarantee work?
According to Witkoff, the deal would mean the United States and European partners could provide “Article 5-like language” to deter any future Russian aggression. “Putin has said that a red flag is NATO admission,” Witkoff told CNN. “Assuming that the Ukrainians could agree to that and could live with that… we were able to win the following concession that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection,” he added.
Witkoff stressed that it was “the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree” to such a clause. He added that Putin had also accepted the idea of “legislative enshrinement” to guarantee Russia would not invade Ukraine or other European countries again.
What did Putin demand in return?
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Despite the breakthrough, Putin reportedly repeated demands for territorial concessions. European officials said Trump told them afterwards that the Russian leader insisted Ukraine hand over the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. In exchange, Putin suggested he would freeze the front lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and pledge not to launch further attacks. He also stuck to his condition that Ukraine scale back its military, abandon NATO ambitions and remain neutral, which he described as addressing the “root causes” of the war.
Why does this matter for a peace deal?
Witkoff said the talks made more progress than previous efforts, with Moscow showing “accommodation more than we’ve seen in the past, certainly more than we saw in the last administration.” “We are intent on trying to hammer out a peace deal that ends the fighting permanently very, very quickly. Quicker than a ceasefire,” he said. “We cut through all kinds of issues that would have to be discussed and agreed to during a ceasefire,” he added. So far, the Kremlin has not publicly responded to the Trump team’s description of the summit.
