Zelensky knows from bitter experience not to trust promises on security

The meeting between Trump and Zelensky raises as many questions about the future of the war as it answers, writes Keir Giles. The risk remains that the US president sees Ukraine, rather than Russia, as the enemy of peace

Just like the summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin a few days previously, Monday’s extended meetings of the US, Ukrainian and European leaders ended with all concerned claiming success – but major questions remain over what exactly was agreed.

Sir Keir Starmer came away from the talks claiming there had been “real progress” towards peace in Ukraine, with “two material outcomes”: the prospect of a direct meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, and of security guarantees to protect Ukraine.

But on both of these issues, it is unclear how these outcomes match up with what Russia thinks is happening next. The notion of “security guarantees” has caused deep confusion and extensive speculation since Trump envoy Steven Witkoff floated the idea of “Nato-like” backing for Ukraine on Sunday. The fact that this would represent a stunning reversal of not just Nato but also US policy, combined with Witkoff’s track record of a poor grasp of the key issues and misunderstanding what he has been told by the Russian side, should have set alarm bells ringing despite the excitable media reaction.

Any realistic protection for Ukraine would thwart Putin’s ambition to address what he calls “the root causes of the crisis” – namely Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign, independent nation able to determine its own future. And sure enough, Monday’s meetings ended with no public clarity on what kind of backing for Ukraine was under discussion, making it impossible to tell if this amounts to meaningful protection or something that can be comfortably ignored by Moscow. Trump’s comment that Russian acceptance of security guarantees for Ukraine was “one of the key points that we need to consider” at the White House meetings could even be read as suggesting that no plans had yet been proposed, let alone endorsed by the Russian side.

Possible support to Ukraine covers a vast range of options, from promises on paper up to the physical presence of Western troops there to deter further Russian aggression. The former could prove as worthless as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, where Russia committed to respecting Ukrainian independence, sovereignty and borders, and to not using military force against it; in return, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons. The latter – putting soldiers on the ground – has until now been consistently ruled out by the United States, and by European states if it means no American backing.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky has referred to promises of arms purchases from the United States as part of a security package, although this just as much resembles part of a bidding war for Trump’s favours in which Zelensky is competing with Putin.

The confusion also extends to the prospect of any possible meeting between Putin and Zelensky. Despite Trump interrupting the meetings to keep the European leaders hanging for 40 minutes while he checked in with Putin, the pattern was repeated of the US and Russian sides coming out with completely different versions of what was agreed on any given issue.

Trump promised a meeting between Zelensky and Putin, while Russia did not agree that this had been agreed. This too is unsurprising. Zelensky has always said he is ready to meet Putin; Putin, on the other hand, maintains that Zelensky is not a legitimate leader and therefore declines to recognise him as a negotiating partner.

In any case, it is far from clear that a meeting of this kind would make it any easier to end the war, given the complete incompatibility of the two sides’ objectives – Ukraine’s destruction, or its survival.

For the leaders of five European states, of Nato and of the European Commission to be extracted from their schedules at zero notice and delivered across the Atlantic in a last-ditch effort to avoid disaster at the hands of Trump was an extraordinary spectacle. It suggested these leaders do genuinely believe that the future of Ukraine is vital to the future of Europe. But whether this dramatic intervention will be followed by meaningful steps to enforce any possible peace settlement remains to be seen.

Talk continues of a European “coalition of the willing” to support peace in Ukraine. But the limits of European capacity to intervene were rammed home painfully in February, when Keir Starmer and others concluded that this would be impossible without US support. The requirement for action rather than words led to a painful realisation of the difference between a coalition of the willing and a coalition of the able.

And despite firm advocacy for a ceasefire from the Europeans on Monday, Trump did not budge from Putin’s position that the fighting must continue during negotiations on a settlement. Trump’s determination to follow the Russian line showed through in his claim that he has “ended six wars without a ceasefire”, which flatly contradicts his claims at the time that the United States was attempting to bring about ceasefires between India and Pakistan, Iran and Israel, and Thailand and Cambodia.

Rightly or wrongly, Putin still assesses that he can gain more by fighting on than by agreeing to a ceasefire. And that brings up another key issue where it is not clear what, if anything, has been agreed: the "land swaps" – Trumpspeak for Ukraine giving up territory and people in the Donbas region that Russia has been unable to conquer militarily, in exchange for saying that it will not attack further on other parts of the front line.

Trump coming face to face with Putin triggered another reversal of his views on Ukraine, and a return to looking to Zelensky alone to end the war – in effect, blaming the victim for resisting rather than the aggressor for attacking. European leaders intervened in an attempt to head off any US bid to impose disastrous terms on Ukraine on behalf of Russia.

The European effort was a carefully choreographed massaging of Trump’s ego, in an attempt to compete with Putin’s hypnotic hold. One after another, the Europeans repeated Trump’s words back to him and praised him as the only person capable of breaking the deadlock and ending the war.

The fact that it is Putin, not Trump, who can end the war at a moment’s notice, and that the ceasefire they were arguing for was long treated as the worst-case outcome and a sellout to Moscow, was carefully overlooked.

But the danger remains that Trump and those around him are seduced by Russia’s framing of the war and by Putin’s manipulation, leading Trump to grasp at the belief that “he wants to make a deal with me”. Treating Russian territorial gains as an inevitable outcome is a Kremlin talking point, strongly endorsed by Trump. And describing Russian agreement to security guarantees for Ukraine as a major concession by Moscow is an extraordinary demonstration of mental capture. The United States has never previously sought or needed permission to protect its allies and partners against invasion.

Volodymyr Zelensky ended the day appearing calm and confident, saying that “no unacceptable decisions were made”. But still, the fundamentals of what has been agreed between Trump and Putin remain murky, and the risk remains of Trump concluding once again that the only obstacle to peace is Ukraine’s inconvenient insistence on defending itself.

European leaders have done their best to bring the situation back from the brink of disaster. The coming days will show whether it was enough.