U.S. President Donald Trump says one of the key questions hanging over a potential Ukrainian peace agreement and beyond, the issue of security guarantees for Kyiv, may be answered today as he meets with the visiting delegation of European leaders.
Among dozens of intractable problems that have delayed the Ukraine peace process is the question of security guarantees for the post-war Ukrainian state, seen as essential, particularly by European leaders, as they seek to find a peace that is permanent and not a breathing space for mutual re-armament.
President Trump has been taciturn on this matter until now, reflecting broader American concerns that offering overt security guarantees to Ukraine would necessarily make the U.S. a party to any future war should the peace not hold. Yet in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, while sitting beside Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Trump hinted that U.S. guarantees may be on the table.
He said: “We’re going to make sure that if there is peace, there’s going to be peace long term” and said there would be discussions on Western security forces in Ukraine — meaning boots on the ground or planes in the air — “maybe later today”.
President Trump said the “first line of defence” for Ukraine going forward would be its European partners and their militaries because “they’re there, they are Europe”, but added, “when it comes to security, there will be a lot of help.”
Tellingly, he said, “We’ll help them out also, we’ll be involved.”
Later, President Trump was more direct, saying: “We will give them very good protection, very good security, that’s part of it. And the [European leaders] who are waiting for us, I think they’re very like-minded. They want to help out.”
There was no discussion of what this American support might be, but all indications so far have pointed to no American boots on the ground, and the multilateral ‘Coalition of the Willing’ of European states serving as peacekeeper forces on the contact line. In the past days, the British government, which leads this coalition with France, has made clear it is ready to deploy troops “from day one” of a ceasefire.
It has been repeatedly made evident that this force, although it would likely draw near-exclusively from NATO members, would not be NATO-aligned or commanded and likely would be excluded from NATO’s Article Five mutual defence obligations, to avoid creating a nuclear tripwire in Eastern Europe.
President Trump has also been abundantly clear that, from his perspective, NATO membership is simply not on the table for Ukraine, something which President Zelensky has repeatedly asked for, even suggesting it would work to become a nuclear power to safeguard its own future if the NATO nuclear umbrella isn’t expanded.
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