The proposal for security guarantees for Ukraine appears to be triggering unease in Moscow, which repeated its objections to any role for forces from NATO countries.
August 19, 2025
President Donald Trump with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders at the White House on Monday. (Tom Brenner/For the Washington Post )
BRUSSELS — European leaders returned relieved on Tuesday from a damage control mission to the White House after talking President Donald Trump down from pressuring Ukraine and receiving promises of a U.S. role in securing a peace deal with Russia.
With pushback and flattery, the Europeans flanking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seemed to wean Trump off the idea of any immediate concessions of Ukrainian land as demanded by Russian President Vladimir Putin when he sat down with Trump in Alaska.
But while they put the onus back on Putin, European leaders said the road to any settlement seems long. They cheered Trump’s openness to security guarantees, even as officials conceded that securing postwar Ukraine would be no simple task, and that they had yet to pin down the exact U.S. role.
Trump on Tuesday said he would not send American troops to Ukraine but suggested the United States would offer support to European nations that do.
President Donald Trump pledged to help protect Ukraine during his meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky on Aug. 18. The Post’s Cat Zakrzewski explains. (Video: Cat Zakrzewski, Alisa Shodiyev Kaff/The Washington Post)
The conversation about security guarantees sets up a potential collision coursewith the Kremlin andappears to be triggering unease in Moscow. Russia’s Foreign Ministry repeated its rejections of any role for forces from NATO countries in Ukraine and warned Monday against “uncontrolled escalation.
A U.S. and European plan to give Ukraine security guarantees, if it pans out, could put Putin in a precarious position: Any role of NATO countries in bolstering Kyiv counters what the Kremlin has fought during more than three years of war in Ukraine.
Already, differences were evident as Trump and European leaders said they would seek a summit between Zelensky and Putin, followed by a trilateral meeting with Trump. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expected it to happen “within two weeks” after Trump called Putin late on Monday.
Soon after, however, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, played down expectations, saying the two leaders agreed only to “explore the possibility” of bringing higher-level officials into the talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said Moscow had not rejected a summit, but that “any contacts involving the heads of state need to be thoroughly prepared.”
Since Trump took office, much of the diplomatic dance has involved all sides maneuvering to avoid drawing his ire and to cast the other party as the barrier to Trump’s ambition for a peace deal.
In their White House trip, Zelensky and his entourage of some of Europe’s most powerful leaders managed again to bring Trump back onside — a setback in the Kremlin’s bid to drive a wedge between them— for now.
Ukraine’s chief European backers still diverged on some points with Trump, after the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Finland, the European Union and NATO made the last-minute trip in crisis mode. They seemed acutely aware that Trump could surprise them again.
And many struck a note of caution on negotiations. “It is a step,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “We are very far from declaring victory.”
Macron told reporters the chief outcome was an “American commitment to work with us on security guarantees.” He said he remained “prudent” because “all of this is highly complex, full of details, and we will have to work on the substance.”
Kyiv’s European partners, wary of an emboldened Russia next door, say any settlement will have to provide a bulwark against future attacks. European officials say this would also give Zelensky a means to gain domestic acceptance for a deal with Russia — especially if it involves any de facto land concessions.
Since early this year, a coalition led by France and Britain — the Europeans’ two nuclear powers — has explored ways to support Kyiv in a future deal. They are the only big countries that have publicly announced readiness to deploy troops — away from the front as a “reassurance force” for Ukraine.
Others, such as Germany, hesitated without promises of concrete U.S. support or offered different military capabilities. As army chiefs pointed out restraints on a large deployment, ideas on the size of a European force were whittled down, and plans have now moved beyond troops. They include providing air and sea power to secure Ukraine’s skies, seas, nuclear power plants and, above all, reinforcing its army with pledges of weapons and training, French and British officials say.
The proposals involve the United States “backstopping” European forces with key capabilities in which they are lagging, such as intelligence, satellite surveillance or air power — but also with political signals of support to deter Russia from a confrontation.
European national security advisers and military chiefs will now hammer out who might do what with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others.
European nations also want the administration to keep U.S. troops in the east near Russia’s borders to avoid stretching their own defenses.
After the meeting with Trump, Merz emphasized that Germany’s role was undecided, while offering a shift in tone: He said “all of Europe should participate.”
Guarantees would not come formally under the NATO flag but from this “coalition of the willing,”which has been joined by officials from other NATO countries, including Turkey and Canada.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer heralded a “breakthrough” in Trump’s position and mentioned the prospect of an “Article 5-like guarantee” — a reference to NATO’s collective defense clause that an attack on one is an attack on all. U.S. officials have also floated the idea, though some European leaders deem it insufficient in practice.
Zelensky’s top aspiration — NATO membership — has long been out of reach without buy-in from all members, particularly the United States.
While U.S. officials said Putin had agreed to security guarantees in Alaska, Russian analysts said any such agreement would probably involve Moscow insisting on a veto — a stance it took during peace talks in Istanbul in 2022 — making an arrangement worthless.
Lavrov doubled down Tuesday on long-standing Russian demands that Ukraine should be barred from NATO and its military neutered.
In Kyiv, though, there were some sighs of relief Tuesday about the U.S. pledge of guarantees. A Zelensky adviser said the Ukrainian leader saw it as an achievement that will be difficult for Moscow to accept in a deal.
Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament foreign affairs committee, said the possibility of American security guarantees “is indeed a great progress.”
A Ukrainian official cautioned, however, that Russia could still seek to stall. “They consider this process a tactical advantage,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “They believe negotiations are important as long as they can help postpone the sanctions and additional military assistance to Ukraine.”
Russian commentators and nationalist military bloggers expressed doubts that Moscow’s price for peace would be met through diplomacy. Putin was left with the choice of continuing the grinding war to slowly gain more territory in eastern Ukraine or making a deal that falls well short of his goals for the 2022 invasion, they wrote.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, poured scorn on the idea that Western nations could provide guarantees good enough for Ukraine that would not be rejected by Moscow.
“The very notion of the dominant side on the battlefield agreeing to guarantees of non-aggression towards its adversary is internally contradictory,” she wrote. “Real guarantees cannot exist: they would presuppose a willingness to directly confront nuclear Russia militarily, which the West neither has now nor is likely to develop in the foreseeable future without world catastrophe.”
Pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov said Russia has “no reason to stop” the war if Ukraine does not accept a radical reduction to its army and an enforced change to its government.
“They are trying to get Russia’s agreement for a Ukrainian NATO to be created. … This is definitely not going to suit Russia,” he said. “The most probable outcome is that Trump will say Russia and Ukraine don’t want peace, so I will leave.”
Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs also was skeptical that European leaders expect Russia to accept a deal that deploys Western troops to Ukraine.
They were raising expectations “to undermine Putin’s own narratives,” he wrote. “This ‘battle of narratives,’ for an audience of one, is fought by Putin and the Europeans with the main goal to make Trump angry at the other side.”
Belton reported from London, Dixon from Riga, Latvia. David L. Stern and Anastacia Galouchka in Kyiv, Beatriz Ríos in Brussels, Kate Brady in Berlin and Michael Birnbaum in Washington contributed to this report.
What readers are saying
The comments reflect a strong skepticism about Donald Trump’s ability to effectively handle the situation in Ukraine, with many expressing concerns about his perceived alignment with Vladimir Putin and his inconsistency in foreign policy. There is a general sentiment that that European leaders need to take a more active role in securing Ukraine’s future, as relying on Trump and the U.S. is seen as unreliable. Some comments suggest that a united European front is crucial to countering Russian aggression and ensuring Ukraine’s security, while others emphasize the importance of providing military support to Ukraine to deter further Russian advances.
“The comments reflect a strong skepticism about Donald Trump’s ability to effectively handle the situation in Ukraine, with many expressing concerns about his perceived alignment with Vladimir Putin and his inconsistency in foreign policy. There is a general sentiment that that European leaders need to take a more active role in securing Ukraine’s future, as relying on Trump and the U.S. is seen as unreliable. Some comments suggest that a united European front is crucial to countering Russian aggression and ensuring Ukraine’s security, while others emphasize the importance of providing military support to Ukraine to deter further Russian advances.”
Ditto. I am extremely skeptical about any peace brokered by taco. He is too aligned with the war criminal, too incompetent, and too stupid.
“any contacts involving the heads of state need to be thoroughly prepared.”
Of course, a week is all it took for putler or his doppelganger to meet TACO.