Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met in Berlin on Monday with senior American and European leaders for the second consecutive day, in the United States’s latest attempt to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Zelensky spent roughly eight hours on Sunday and Monday in negotiations alongside President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and the president’s son-in-law and former Middle East adviser, Jared Kushner, among other European leaders.
“We feel really good about the progress that we’ve made,” a U.S. official told reporters. “I would assess that it was really, really positive in almost every respect. We’ve got consensus on a number of issues that we view as critical to getting to a peace deal.”
“We believe that we probably solved for, I don’t know, it could be 90%, literally 90%, of the issues between Ukraine and Russia,” the official added. “But there’s some more things that have to be worked out.”
The broader meetings in Berlin included representatives from France, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
One of the primary subjects up for discussion is Ukraine’s desire for security guarantees from the West, particularly the U.S., to ensure that Russia cannot reinvade Ukraine.
“The basis of that agreement is basically to have really, really strong guarantees Article Five-like, also very, very strong deterrence, you know, size of military, weaponry,” a second official said, referencing one of the bedrock principles of the NATO alliance. “If you’re writing such a strong guarantee, you want to make sure that there’s really good safeguards in place so that chances of being called [on are] as low as possible.”
The second official referred to the U.S. security guarantee offer as the “platinum standard.”
The second official highlighted that these security guarantee offers could be pulled from a deal if the U.S. is unhappy with where the negotiations head.
“Those guarantees will not be on the table forever. Those guarantees are on the table right now,” the second official said, adding that the Ukrainian and European officials were “very surprised that they think that we can get Russia to agree to that, since obviously no NATO is such a critical element. So giving this NATO-like Article Five guarantee is something that President Trump believes he can get Russia to accept.”
Ukraine has sought NATO membership since the war began, as a security guarantee, but it has not happened, in part because it would drag the alliance into the conflict. Last year, NATO announced that Ukraine was on the “irreversible” pathway to membership, but the Trump administration has nixed this long-term objective, and Zelensky has softened on the request.
Russia has long rebuffed Ukraine’s public advocacy for NATO membership, arguing that the Western alliance, which is a defensive alliance, is moving too far east. Finland and Sweden have both joined NATO since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Moscow has been steadfast in its demands to end the war, so it remains tenuous as to whether the Russians would agree to a deal with this component in it, though the second official noted that Russia has “indicated” it was “open to Ukraine joining” the European Union.
Zelensky emphasized in the meetings the need to avoid mistakes made during previous negotiations with Russia that date back to the country’s founding after the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Ukrainians are also simultaneously working with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink about postwar reconstruction, and the second official noted that the U.S. wants to use frozen Russian assets to help pay for the reconstruction.
Another major component of the talks that remains unresolved is the topic of redrawing borders.
Russia occupies approximately 90% of the Donbas region, which is the easternmost region of Ukraine that borders Russia. Russian and Ukrainian forces have been sporadically fighting there for more than a decade.
Russia wants to keep the territory it holds, both in the Donbas and further south, and gain the rest of the Donbas through the negotiations. Ukraine has refused any concession of territory, noting that it goes against its constitution and, as such, would require changes to it.
The second official said the issue of territory “will be up to them,” adding, “That’s something we were very clear about.”
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There are still disagreements on who will operate the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest on the European continent.
The second official noted that there is “still a little bit of gap … but at the end of the day, they both want it to be repaired and functioning in a good way and providing energy. And it seems like we’re close to them agreeing to essentially a 50-50 split of the power, which would be, I think, a good outcome there.”
