US officials said on Monday that the US, Ukraine, and Europe have agreed on a plan to provide Ukraine with NATO-style security guarantees as part of a potential peace deal with Russia, an idea Moscow is unlikely to accept.
“The basis of that agreement is basically to have really, really strong guarantees, Article 5-like,” a senior US official told reporters after US, Ukrainian, and European officials held two days of talks in Berlin, according to POLITICO.
Article 5 of the NATO Treaty outlines the mutual defense commitment among NATO allies, stating that an armed attack against one member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” Article 5 doesn’t explicitly mandate sending troops to defend a member, but says each ally will take action it “deems necessary, including the use of armed force.”
US officials didn’t detail exactly what the security guarantee would entail beyond saying it would be similar to Article 5, but German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested the US was offering a lot. “The legal and material security guarantees that the US has put on the table here in Berlin are remarkable,” he said.
Since one of Russia’s primary motives for invading Ukraine was the country’s potential future NATO membership, something recently acknowledged by a former Biden administration official, there’s little chance Moscow would agree to a deal that gives Ukraine the benefits of joining NATO without formally entering the alliance.
US officials also acknowledged after the talks that the US and Ukraine are still far apart on the issue of territory. The original US proposal for a peace deal that was leaked to the media involved Ukraine ceding what territory it still controls in the Donbas, a key Russian demand, but Ukrainian officials continue to reject the idea.
“For now, we have different positions, to be honest,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. “But I think my colleagues have heard my personal position.”
Zelensky participated in the talks on Monday with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. One of the US officials speaking to reporters after the meeting said that Ukraine had little time to accept the US’s security guarantee offer.
“Those guarantees will not be on the table forever. Those guarantees are on the table right now if there’s a conclusion that’s reached in a good way,” the official said.
