U.S., Russia agreed on Ukraine security pledges, Witkoff says

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(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agreed at their summit in Alaska last week that the US would be able to offer Ukraine security guarantees, according to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy.

“We got to an agreement that the US and other nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to Ukraine,” Witkoff said on CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the NATO provision that says if one ally is attacked, it is considered an attack on all member states.

But Witkoff, who attended the leaders’ meeting at a military base in Alaska on Friday, said their agreement stopped short of allowing Ukraine to achieve its longstanding goal of NATO membership.

“Putin says the red flag is NATO admission,” Witkoff said.

Russia went into the summit demanding that Ukraine give up territory that Russia seized in its three-year war. Witkoff said Putin “made some concessions with regards with all five of those regions,” and added, “There needs to be a discussion of Donetsk” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he meets Trump at the White House on Monday, suggesting there is room to negotiate.

European leaders will be joining Zelenskiy at the White House meeting with Trump, in a show of support as Ukraine’s leader faces growing US pressure to agree to a quick peace deal with Russia that involves giving up territory.

Trump on Sunday insisted that he made “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA” in a post on Truth Social.

While Trump had gone into Friday’s summit with Putin seeking a ceasefire, he’d emerged saying he was going to focus on a final settlement.

Witkoff said the switch was made because Putin and Trump made “so much progress” that there was no need for a ceasefire period in which the details would be worked out.

“The thesis of a ceasefire is that you’d be discussing all of these issues that we already resolved” in Alaska, Witkoff said on CNN, noting that they couldn’t finalize any discussion of land swaps because Zelenskiy needed to be directly involved. Trump didn’t invite Zelenskiy to the meeting in Alaska.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday the US hasn’t ruled out a ceasefire in Ukraine as part of the goal of brokering a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, while arguing that additional sanctions would be unlikely to force Putin to accept a deal.

Rubio also said that the US remains committed to crafting a deal that includes both “what the border lines are going to look like” and Russia accepting that Ukraine “is a sovereign country.”

“They have a right, like every sovereign country does in the world, to have, to enter into security alliances with other countries to prevent an invasion in the future, to prevent threats to their national security,” Rubio said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “That’s not an unreasonable request.”

Rubio said no US sanctions on Russia have been relaxed and the US may eventually end up imposing tougher penalties if talks stall.

“And so those options remain to the president,” he said. “The minute he takes those steps, all talks stop.”

Engaging with Russia is necessary to end the war, “as distasteful people may find it,” Rubio said.

Asked whether a ceasefire is off the table, Rubio said, “No, it’s not off the table.” At the same time, he added, “Let’s be frank, this is not our war.”