Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hailed the decision to offer security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal as he prepared to meet Donald Trump in Washington on Monday. “Security guarantees, as a result of our joint work, must really be very practical, delivering protection on land, in the air and at sea, and must be developed with Europe’s participation,” said the Ukrainian president.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, the real estate developer Steve Witkoff, said Vladimir Putin had agreed that the US and European allies could offer Ukraine a Nato-style, “Article 5-like” security guarantee as part of an eventual deal to end the war. It appeared to be a major shift for Putin, but Witkoff has previously got it wrong when announcing what has been agreed in talks with the Russians – he does not speak Russian and has walked into meetings with Vladimir Putin without a translator of his own.
Russia agrees that any future peace agreement on Ukraine must provide security guarantees to Kyiv but Moscow also needs credible security assurances, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to international organisations in Vienna, said early on Monday. “Many leaders of EU states emphasise that a future peace agreement should provide reliable security assurances or guarantees for Ukraine,” Ulyanov said. “Russia agrees with that. But it has equal right to expect that Moscow will also get efficient security guarantees.” Russia has not been invaded by another country since the end of the second world war – apart from the humiliating Ukrainian counter-invasion of Kursk – while having repeatedly invaded other countries and illegally annexed their territory.
European heavyweight leaders will join Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House meeting with Trump on Monday, writes Luke Harding, in an extraordinary joint effort to push back on a US-backed plan that would allow Russia to take further Ukrainian territory. They are expected to argue against a land swap plan that rewards Russian aggression, and to seek further clarity on what security guarantees the US is willing to offer in the event of a settlement. The delegation includes the French president, Emmanuel Macron; Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz; Italy’s PM, Giorgia Meloni; Keir Starmer, the British PM; Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte; the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen; and the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb.
In a CBS interview after the Trump-Putin talks in Alaska, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, gave short shrift to the Russian ruler’s “long historical complaint” that “root causes” of the Ukraine war must be addressed as part of a peace deal. “We’re not going to focus on all of that stuff. We’re going to focus on this: are they going to stop fighting or not? And what it’s going to take to stop the fighting.”
Rubio continued: “If we’re being honest and serious here, both sides are going to have to give, and both sides should expect to get something from this. And that’s a very difficult thing to do … Ukraine obviously feels, you know, harmed, and rightfully so, because they were invaded. And the Russian side, because they feel like they got momentum in the battlefield, and frankly, don’t care, don’t seem to care very much about how many Russian soldiers die in this endeavour.”
Dan Sabbagh writes that Rubio gave the inbound European delegation some hope, insisting to NBC that a ceasefire is “not off the table” – despite Putin insisting it can only come after a complete peace deal – and confirming that the US is interested in contributing to western security guarantees to Ukraine. “It’s one of their fundamental demands is that if this war were to end, they have to make sure this never happens again.” The US secretary of state is a traditional Republican whose instincts towards Russia are hawkish, although he has a record of going with the flow when it comes to the president’s impulses.
Russian attacks on Ukraine continued over Sunday night. A missile strike on Kharkiv city injured 11 people, said Kharkiv’s mayor. A guided bomb strike on a Sumy oblast community left a woman injured, said the head of the regional military administration, while civilian facilities were damaged in a series of attacks.
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