Ukraine, allies agree on security guarantees framework as peace talks advance

In Berlin on Monday, negotiators from Ukraine and its Western allies announced they had hammered out the broad strokes of a security framework—something that would work like NATO's collective defense pledge, but without the formal alliance. The specifics of how it would actually function remained murky. Two American officials told the New York Times that the guarantees would operate on principles similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the mechanism that binds NATO's 32 members to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. But when it came to Ukraine, nobody had yet figured out what that would look like in practice.

The security guarantees had dominated the negotiating table since the weekend, when Ukrainian representatives and their wartime partners convened to try to salvage a peace framework. An initial draft, leaked last month, struck many as tilted too far toward Moscow. European leaders and Kyiv pushed back hard, even tabling an alternative proposal that Russia immediately rejected. The original text had been vague about how Ukraine would be protected from another invasion, and that vagueness persisted. Kyiv wanted an international military presence on the ground, but Moscow said it would view that as aggression. NATO members, for their part, showed no appetite for deploying troops.

The Trump administration signaled it would not send American soldiers either, but suggested it could help in other ways—perhaps enforcing an air exclusion zone, perhaps sharing military intelligence with the Ukrainians. A U.S. official described the proposal to CNN as a "platinum standard" package, complete with penalties for Moscow if it broke the agreement. "This is the most robust set of security protocols they've ever seen," the official said. "It's a very, very strong package."

In exchange for these commitments, Ukraine agreed to accept a permanent bar on NATO membership—a Russian demand that had seemed unthinkable months earlier. President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the tension at a brief press conference Monday. "For now, to be honest, we have different positions," he said. "But I think my colleagues have heard my personal position." European leaders who attended the Berlin talks issued a statement saying there had been "significant progress," though they noted that some open questions would need to be resolved in the final phases—a veiled reference to potential direct talks between Zelensky and Vladimir Putin.

At the White House, Trump mixed optimism with impatience. "Things seem to be going well," he told reporters, adding that he had been saying this for a long time and believed they were "closer now than ever." He also seemed to have abandoned his own Christmas deadline for a deal, telling journalists that "the deadline is when we're finished." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking to an Iranian radio station, said he was waiting to hear how Americans had discussed matters with the Ukrainians, while repeating Moscow's claim that Europe was waging war against Russia through Ukrainian bodies.

But the real sticking point remained territory. Russia occupies roughly 20 percent of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Moscow now demands that all of Donetsk and Luhansk—including areas still held by Kyiv—be recognized as Russian territory. Americans seemed open to the idea; Europeans and especially Ukrainians saw it as surrender. Zelensky tied any territorial decisions to the security guarantees, saying he needed to understand how they would work before making painful concessions. Trump, when asked about the land question, noted that the Ukrainians "have already lost some territory." The negotiations had reached a point where both sides wanted the war to end, but neither could agree on what ending it would cost.