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The U.S. has agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal to end Russia's nearly four-year war, and more talks are likely this weekend, U.S. officials said Monday following the latest discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin.
The officials said talks with U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, led to narrowing differences on security guarantees that Kyiv said must be provided, as well as on Moscow's demand that Ukraine concede land in the Donbas region in the country's east.
Trump was expected to dial into a dinner Monday evening with negotiators and European leaders, with more talks likely this weekend in Miami or elsewhere in the United States, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly by the White House.
The U.S. officials said the offer of security guarantees won't be on the table "forever." They said the Trump administration plans to put forward the agreement on guarantees for Senate approval, although they didn't specify whether it would be ratified like a treaty, which needs the chamber's two-thirds approval.
In a statement, European leaders in Berlin said they and the U.S. committed to work together to provide "robust security guarantees" including a European-led "multinational force Ukraine" supported by the U.S.
They said the force's work would include "operating inside Ukraine" as well as assisting in rebuilding Ukraine's forces, securing its skies and supporting safer seas. They said Ukrainian forces should remain at a peacetime level of 800,000.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called it a "truly far-reaching, substantial agreement that we did not have before, namely that both Europe and the U.S. are jointly prepared to do this."
Questions over Ukraine's postwar security and the fate of occupied territories have been the main obstacles in talks. Zelenskyy has emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress.
Meanwhile, Russia has said it will not accept any troops from NATO countries being based on Ukrainian soil.
Zelenskyy on Monday called talks "substantial" and noted that differences remain on the issue of territories.
Zelenskyy has expressed readiness to drop Ukraine's bid to join the NATO military alliance if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine's preference remains NATO membership as the best security guarantee to prevent further Russian aggression.
Ukraine has continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of Donetsk region still under its control as a key condition for peace.
The U.S. officials on Monday said there is consensus on about 90 per cent of the U.S.-authored peace plan, and that Russia has indicated it is open to Ukraine joining the European Union, something it previously said it did not object to.
Putin has cast Ukraine's bid to join NATO, however, as a major threat to Moscow's security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.
Asked whether the negotiations could be over by Christmas, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal was a "thankless task."
"I can only speak for the Russian side, for President Putin," Peskov said. "He is open to peace, to a serious peace and serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time."
Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.
Elsewhere in Europe, the head of Britain's MI6 spy agency said Monday that Putin is stalling efforts to end Russia's war on Ukraine, and is testing the West with tactics that fall "just below the threshold of war."
Blaise Metreweli said Putin is "dragging out negotiations" on stopping the conflict, and remains determined to "subjugate Ukraine and harass NATO members."
"We are now operating in a space between peace and war," Metreweli said of the wider global threat landscape in her first public speech since becoming chief of Britain's foreign intelligence agency two months ago.
Metreweli accused Moscow of sponsoring cyberattacks on other countries' critical infrastructure, drone incursions around European airports, campaigns of arson, sabotage and disinformation, and "aggressive activities in our seas, above and below the waves."
"The export of chaos is a feature, not a bug, in this Russian approach to international engagement, and we should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus," she said.
Russia regularly denies accusations that it is behind drone incidents or cyberattacks affecting Western countries. It also denies any plans to attack NATO, which has been providing weapons, intelligence and other assistance to Ukraine since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion.
In a warning to Britain's adversaries, Metreweli said MI6 will "sharpen our edge" and "take calculated risks." She said the agency should tap into "our historical, SOE instincts," referring to the clandestine special operations executive that sent agents on daring sabotage missions in Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War.
"We will never stoop to the tactics of our opponents. But we must seek to outplay them," she said.
