US president Donald Trump has pleased Ukrainian and European leaders by promising US involvement in providing security guarantees for Ukraine if a peace settlement with Russia ever comes together.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte pronounced himself “excited” over Trump’s public commitment, on Monday at a summit at the White House, to some sort of security guarantee, a pledge the Europeans have been eagerly seeking. He called it “a breakthrough”.
But exactly what those guarantees would involve remains ambiguous. Officials promised more clarity in the weeks to come as defence ministry planners come to grips with the considerable complications of turning a broad promise into realistic options.
Trump said European countries would be the “first line of defence” in providing security guarantees for Ukraine, but Washington will “help them out, we’ll be involved”. He added later: “European nations are going to take a lot of the burden. We’re going to help them and we’re going to make it very secure.”
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He did not explain how.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke of an “article 5-like” guarantee outside of Nato itself, though based on the commitment in the alliance’s charter that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all of them.
But it is hard to imagine that Nato itself would not be quickly implicated if any member state of the alliance with troops stationed in Ukraine gets into a shooting war with Russia.
Nor is it a given that Russia would change its stance and agree that troops from Nato countries could be stationed in Ukraine under a form of a de facto Nato-backed guarantee. Many analysts, such as John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, believe Russia’s effort to control Ukraine is based on its stated desire to stop Nato enlargement to countries Moscow considers part of its sphere, especially those that were part of the Soviet Union.
In that view, Moscow invaded Ukraine to block Nato and ensure the country does not become a member. So the idea that Russia would agree to let troops from Nato countries station themselves in Ukraine after fighting a long war to prevent them from being there in the first place is complicated at best.
“Our goal is to ensure that we build the security guarantees together with the US,” Finland’s president Alexander Stubb said on Monday night. “I should think that Russia’s view of security guarantees is quite different from our view.”
Russian officials rejected the idea even before Monday’s meeting. A foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said Russia “categorically rejects any scenario that envisages the appearance in Ukraine of a military contingent with the participation of Nato countries”.
Some European officials and analysts see Trump’s new commitment to security guarantees as a way of convincing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to agree to Russian demands to give up the rest of the eastern Donetsk region that is not occupied by Russian forces, in order to stop the war that Russia is slowly winning. That argument suggests that what matters is a sovereign Ukraine, its future assured, even if Russia retains the 20 per cent or more of Ukrainian territory it has occupied since 2014.
The territory issue did not even come up in the meeting with European leaders on Monday, according to Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Europeans were relieved, but the question has hardly gone away and underlies what may be part of a final settlement. The land the Kremlin wants in Donetsk alone is considerably larger than the total amount of land Russia has managed to take since November 2022, and at great cost in lives. So it would be a huge gift to Moscow and a huge sacrifice for Zelenskiy, who rejects the idea out of hand.
Instead, the focus in the White House was on security guarantees. Zelenskiy warned of the lack of details on Sunday and stressed that the proposal still needed to be worked out. “We need security to work in practice,” he said.
Some work has been done on what a security guarantee might look like under a “coalition of the willing” led by Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. US secretary of state Marco Rubio has been charged with co-ordination from the US side. But France, Britain and tiny Estonia are the only countries that have indicated they could deploy troops in a postwar Ukraine.
[ European leaders to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine with Donald TrumpOpens in new window ]
Germany has hesitated and main front-line states such as Poland have refused to take part. The Poles, mistrustful of Russia, have said they want to keep their troops at home for their own defence, and where they are genuinely protected by Nato’s article 5, rather than vulnerable to incidents or accidents that Russia might use to weaken or divide peacekeepers.
A likely solution could be about 15,000 to 20,000 European troops being deployed in Ukraine, said Camille Grand, a former Nato assistant secretary general who has studied options for such security guarantees. Troops would be away from the front lines, in support of the Ukrainian military, already the largest and most experienced in Europe, with some 900,000 people under arms.
The Europeans would represent a “reassurance force”. Other countries or even the United Nations could provide separate, unarmed front-line observers, aided by satellite and drone surveillance.
The United States would be asked to provide operational intelligence, including satellite cover and information about Russian intentions or troop movements, and perhaps train Ukrainian forces, but without troops on the ground. But “if things go sour”, said Grand, now an analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations, “it would be good to have a public commitment that the Americans would not sit on their hands”.
Ideally that would include a vow to use US air power and naval assets.
The Europeans also want to maintain a US troop presence on the eastern flank of Nato, especially if European troops are deployed in Ukraine, potentially weakening Nato’s own deterrence. Europe’s ready forces are relatively small, so a deployment of some of them in Ukraine would shrink Nato’s defence posture.
[ Russia rejects Trump claim that it would accept European peacekeepers in UkraineOpens in new window ]
Ideally, Grand said, Rutte and the new Nato and US supreme commander in Europe, Gen Alexus G Grynkewich, would be charged with helping with planning. Nato is experienced at co-ordinating other countries’ forces and assets, Grand said, as it has done in previous non-Nato conflicts, such as Libya.
“And none of this needs to be negotiated with Putin,” Grand said. Russia could be informed but not allowed a veto, he said. He added that Moscow’s reluctance or willingness to accept such guarantees “will be a test of its good faith”.
Still, Grand said, “what worries me is who in Europe is willing to do something”.
Starmer has made vague promises but the British military is small, and a commitment to Ukraine is risky and expensive and has no end date. That would normally involve rotational forces, with one group on the ground, one group training to go and one group returning. And it would require materiel support, from arms to barracks, including armour, air defences, air power and naval power on standby.
Macron kept his enthusiasm in check after the meeting. Security guarantees come with a peace settlement, and Putin wants to continue the war, he said. With many details unsettled, it was clear that a deal to end the war is not at hand. “Do I think Putin wants peace? I think the answer is no,” he said. “It’s far from over.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
What ‘security guarantees,’ could look like in Ukraine
At the meeting among US president Donald Trump, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other European leaders on Monday in Washington, there was frequent discussion of “security guarantees” to make sure Russia does not invade again, writes David E Sanger.
Britain’s prime minister Keir Starmer has talked about assembling a force, drawn from a “coalition of the willing”, that would be stationed in Ukraine after a ceasefire or peace agreement. But no one has detailed publicly what that force would look like.
And what it looks like matters, military officials say.
Peacekeeping force One concept is a full-blown “peacekeeping force”, presumably armed, that would supplement the Ukrainian military. It would be put in place only for defensive purposes, but the idea would be to deter Russia by making the Kremlin think hard about getting into a conflict with soldiers from Nato member states.
The problem is that to be a credible deterrent, that would take tens of thousands of troops.
‘Tripwire’ force A second possibility is a far smaller “tripwire” force. It would not be able to mount much of a defence, but the theory is that the Russians would hesitate to risk killing non-Ukrainian Europeans in any resumed invasion effort.
That, however, is an untested theory – and a big roll of the dice.
‘Observer’ force A third possibility would be to create an “observer” force. It could be small, a few hundred troops or so. They would essentially be there to report on any incoming military action. But that role could be accomplished with satellites and ground cameras, and the force wouldn’t be big enough to mount any kind of defence.
Trump has not committed to adding US troops to this mix, no matter what form it takes. And the decision about what the force would look like will probably depend on what a ceasefire or a peace accord looks like – if negotiations get that far.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
