U.S. offers Ukraine security guarantee in bid to break peace-talks deadlock

Washington promises to seek Senate backing for U.S. role in safeguarding Ukraine, a must-have for Kyiv

- Laurence Norman, Bertrand Benoit & Anastasia Malenko

The shift could lift one of the biggest obstacles to Kyiv signing up to a peace deal with Russia.

(AFP)

The U.S. pledged to protect Ukraine from any future Russian attack, U.S. officials said, offering to support European security guarantees and seek Senate backing for Washington's promised role, which it hasn’t yet publicly detailed.

The American pledge, which Russian officials are likely to dispute, came on the second day of talks in Berlin among the U.S., Ukraine and European leaders and top officials. It remains unclear to what extent Washington would militarily intervene.

The shift could lift one of the biggest obstacles to Kyiv signing up to a peace deal with Russia, but a bigger hurdle remains, over territory. Still unresolved is the issue of which contested territories Kyiv would keep and whether Ukraine would withdraw unilaterally from an area of the Donetsk region that it currently controls.

European officials have for months offered Ukraine security guarantees to deter a future Russian attack but they have stressed the need to have some form of U.S. help to backstop those plans. European officials have advised Ukraine to tread carefully in agreeing to other major concessions until they had locked in clear U.S. military support.

The U.S. officials said they had secured consensus with Ukraine on 90% of the issues being discussed after eight hours of face-to-face talks since Sunday between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump's Russia envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Trump told reporters at the White House that the talks were “very good,” noting he has had numerous conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.