Why Security Guarantees Are So Crucial, and Thorny, for Ukraine

While Kyiv has reported progress in negotiations, and is accelerating talks in the coming days, major questions remain unresolved about which countries will provide what kind of security for how long.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine meeting with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesJan. 3, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ETThrough every twist and turn in peace negotiations, President Volodymyr Zelensky has made one thing clear: Ukraine will not lay down its arms without firm guarantees for its postwar security.The latest flurry of talks with the United States has brought the two sides closer than ever to an agreement that could satisfy Ukraine’s insistence on Western protection against another Russian invasion.Still, even as Kyiv has drawn up an outline with the Trump administration, thorny questions remain: How the guarantees would work, which countries would provide them, and how long they would last. Ukraine seeks concrete answers to assuage worries about whether its allies would actually enter into a conflict with Russia in Kyiv’s defense.President Trump has said that Europe would take the lead in guaranteeing Ukraine’s future security. On Saturday, European national security advisers were in the Ukrainian capital to try to fill in some of the details in a draft peace plan. U.S. officials were expected to join remotely.The meeting will be the first of many in the coming days to tackle the topic of security guarantees. Here’s what you need to know.Why are security guarantees such a big focus?Ukraine’s insistence on the guarantees is rooted in the bitter experience of seeing previous security assurances collapse when put to the test.The most painful example is the Budapest Memorandum, a pledge signed in the early years after Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. Under that 1994 accord, Ukraine transferred old Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for “security assurances” from Russia, the United States and Britain. China and France gave separate assurances of their own.The memorandum did not detail those guarantees and offered no promise of military support in case of an attack. Kyiv says the lack of specificity gave Russia free rein to invade Ukraine, as it did first in 2014 and then with the full-scale invasion that began in 2022.That helps explain why Ukrainian officials now want clearly defined, legally binding guarantees before agreeing to end the war.What has been proposed?A recent draft of the peace plan said that the United States, NATO and European states would provide Ukraine with so-called Article 5-like guarantees — a reference to NATO’s mutual defense clause, which requires its members to come to one another’s aid in the event of an attack.The provisions outlined in the draft also include keeping Ukraine’s army at a peacetime strength of 800,000 troops, with funding from Western partners; membership in the European Union, which Ukraine sees as a deterrent to Russia; European military support; and a bilateral security agreement with the United States, voted on by Congress.ImageUkrainian soldiers in an artillery unit firing at Russian positions near Pokrovsk in the Donbas region in December.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesThe latest proposal was primarily developed by Ukraine and the United States. Now, European allies must decide what exactly they are willing to provide, how and by when. The meetings in the coming days are designed to address these issues.Mr. Zelensky has said that European military support would come from the so-called Coalition of the Willing, a group of about 30 countries that have committed to strengthening Ukraine’s postwar security by contributing to its air, land and sea defenses. Some European countries have said they would be willing to deploy forces in Ukraine as part of that effort.Mr. Zelensky also wants a precise date for Ukraine’s entry into the European Union, but it remains unclear whether the bloc would agree to provide one, given the complexity of its membership negotiations.The terms of a bilateral security deal with the United States have also not been ironed out, though Mr. Trump has already indicated that he would be unlikely to put troops in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky has said that Mr. Trump offered guarantees lasting 15 years, while Ukraine wants them to be in force for decades.The Kremlin has vehemently rejected any plan for a Western troop presence in Ukraine, and it has shown little indication that it would agree to the peace proposal that Ukrainian, American and European officials have been laboriously drafting for weeks.What happens next?Saturday’s meeting of European national security advisers — held in Kyiv as a symbolic show of support for war-torn Ukraine — appears aimed at laying the groundwork for a meeting on Monday in France of leaders of the Coalition of the Willing. After that, Mr. Zelensky has said he hopes that another round of talks with the United States will take place and include Europe.While security guarantees are a major topic, they are not the only sticking point. Ukraine and the United States have also yet to agree on issues of territory, most crucially in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.A previous peace proposal drafted by Russia and the United States called for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the areas of Donetsk that Kyiv still holds and turn them into a neutral demilitarized zone. A compromise outlined by Mr. Zelensky last week builds on that idea and calls for Russia to also pull its troops from areas it controls in Donetsk.Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.SKIP