A US guarantee to defend Kyiv against Putin has no credibility, when there’s very little prospect of it being enforced
Commentators have oscillated between accusing Donald Trump of capitulating to Vladimir Putin’s demands and praising him for applying new pressure Credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP
19 November 2025
After the failed Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in August, the general prognosis was that US efforts to bring peace to Ukraine had stalled. The assessments grew even darker in late October, when the White House sanctioned Russia’s two largest oil companies, tired of the Kremlin’s refusal to agree to an immediate ceasefire. In the 11 months since he returned to office, commentators have oscillated between accusing the US president of capitulating to Putin’s demands and praising him for bringing new pressure to bear on the Kremlin.
Now, according to various reports, the Trump administration has drafted the rough outline for a possible peace agreement. Russia appears cautiously optimistic, so once again, criticism is mounting of the US president’s supposed willingness to sell out Kyiv in order to force an end to the conflict. But the bigger question is whether the proposals will survive contact with reality. There are good reasons to be sceptical.
As reported, the latest US draft has a number of elements that will serve as the basis for further discussions. The Ukrainian army would be expected to withdraw from the entirety of the Donbas region, including the areas the Russians haven’t been able to capture, with the region then potentially leased to Moscow. The Ukrainian army’s size and capacity would be cut, and the long-range weapons that Kyiv has been using against Russian energy targets would no longer be available. In addition, US military aid to Kyiv would be rolled back and the Ukrainian government would be expected to recognise Russian as an official language.
Concessions would be expected of the Russians as well, although the list is shorter. The Trump plan appears to compel Russian troops to hand back some of the territory they’ve captured in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. And Ukraine could be offered some sort of US defence guarantee in exchange for compromising on its own military capabilities. The reason behind such a guarantee is straightforward: mollify Ukrainian objections to other parts of the plan and deter Russia from resuming the war at a time of their choosing.
Yet the same difficulties that have hampered previous attempts at US-led diplomacy in the past are still hanging around like a bad cold. It is not yet clear that both sides have abandoned the view that continuing the war – in the hope of claiming or reclaiming territory, shifting the military balance, and getting a peace deal with better terms sometime in the future – is a better gamble than sitting down at the table and conceding to their opponent now. When two combatants regard the war they’re fighting as existential, there’s only so much a foreign mediator – even one as powerful as the United States – can do.
On the Ukrainian side, the concessions the Trump administration is expecting are politically toxic and run head-first into their red lines. For Volodymyr Zelensky, who is under significant domestic pressure over a corruption scandal, US officials are essentially asking him to give up a chunk of heavily fortified land that tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops continue to fight to hold. While the Ukrainian military isn’t resistant to tactical withdrawals, it is dead set against surrendering critically-important terrain that the Russians have failed to take despite enormous casualties. Indeed, it took about 18 months for the Russians to be in a position of capturing Pokrovsk, a small city whose pre-war population of 60,000 is about half the size of Dayton, Ohio.
The Americans may argue that, given the way the battlefield is trending, it’s only a matter of time before Ukraine loses Pokrovsk anyway. But the Ukrainians are bound to look at projections like these as dangerous, defeatist and disrespectful of their army’s sacrifices. If the Ukrainians are as sensitive as they are about Pokrovsk, one can only imagine what they’re saying about losing the entire Donbas.
Trump’s purported suggestion of a US security guarantee as some sort of consolation prize for Ukraine is also beyond strange. First, it goes against Trump’s entire shtick about shedding security commitments that the US military shouldn’t be asked to fulfil anyway. Can such a scheme truly be categorised as America First?
Second, how would bringing Ukraine under the US security umbrella be any different to offering Kyiv Nato membership, a decision that successive US administrations have avoided for two decades, because it would inevitably anger Russia and require unanimity within the alliance? Some Nato members may even oppose a US security guarantee, afraid that Trump and whomever comes after him would expect them to help defend Ukraine if the situation deteriorates again. In turn, the Russians are highly likely to view a US security guarantee as a distinction without a difference.
And what about the elephant in the room: would a US security guarantee to Ukraine actually mean anything? Would the Americans enforce it? The Biden and Trump administrations have disagreed on a lot of things, but both have held the position that it’s not worth getting into a conventional conflict with the world’s largest nuclear power just to defend Ukraine.
Ukraine diplomacy isn’t dead yet. But it’s not getting any easier either.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities
It doesn’t have AN enormous, flaw, it IS an enormous flaw, constructed by people that should be put up against a wall.
This secret plan is so secret that everyone in the world knows about it. Now that the russians have deliberately leaked the TACO plans, everyone knows what was being done behind the backs of Ukraine. I believe Zelensky will once again tell the US and russia to go fuck themselves. He has no other option.
“into a conventional conflict with the world’s largest nuclear power ” ? Thats’NOT russia, up to 2014 Ukraine designed, build and MAINTAINED all nukes, cause they were the technicians of the Soviet Union. USA spends over 100 billion a year to keep their nukes updated!