US negotiators offered more substantial security guarantees to Kyiv as part of President Donald Trump's renewed push to end the Russia-Ukraine war, but the effort still appeared part of a bid to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky on territory.
The Trump administration offered to provide Ukraine with strong "Article 5-like" security guarantees - a reference to NATO's mutual defense clause - as part of the current deal to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, a US official told reporters, without providing any details.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the US offer of security guarantees "remarkable" and that reaching a peace deal by Christmas "now depends entirely on the Russian side."
It was part of an upbeat assessment from senior officials gathered for the talks in Berlin on Monday. Working-group level discussions may continue this coming weekend in the US, possibly Miami, the site of previous discussions, the US official said. Trump is likely to call into a dinner meeting of European leaders on Monday hosted by Merz and also attended by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
"An agreement has been reached that a ceasefire should be secured by substantial legal and material security guarantees from the US and Europe," Merz said on Monday. "This is a truly far-reaching and substantial agreement, which we did not have before."
Zelensky's top security official, Rustem Umerov, cited "real progress" in the German capital after the Ukrainian leader and his team held a second day of discussions lasting about five hours with with US officials led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law.
As the Trump administration tries to pressure Ukraine, it was unclear the new US effort would be able to overcome the obvious but so-far insurmountable hurdles that have halted previous rounds of talks. Russian leader Vladimir Putin hasn't budged from his maximalist demands about seizing a vast swathe of territory, including areas of the eastern Donbas region he's been unable to capture. Kyiv, which was attacked by Russian forces in February 2022, has refused to cede land.
Both issues have bedeviled previous rounds of talks. While the US official said Trump was not trying to pressure Ukraine and that they believed Russia could agree to the details negotiated in Berlin, Moscow was not included in the talks, which came after a pro-Russia proposal drafted by Washington and Moscow enraged Ukrainian and European officials.
Even as he lauded the progress on guarantees, Zelensky made clear that the positions between Moscow and Kyiv when it comes to territory lie far apart. He urged the US to continue mediating on the "painful" issue. The Ukrainian leader also said that many "destructive" elements in the first draft of the Witkoff plan had been removed.
"We're making efforts to make our position clear," Zelensky said.
The Americans and Ukrainians discussed territorial issues, with the US backing a Russian demand for Kyiv to withdraw from areas of its eastern Donetsk region that Moscow's forces have failed to seize since 2014, a person familiar with the matter said.
Zelensky repeatedly rejected the demand and - together with European allies - is insisting on a ceasefire along the current line of contact, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.
The Ukrainian president signaled on Sunday that Kyiv could step back from its long-term goal of joining NATO if it reached bilateral security agreements with the US, European and other states, potentially including Canada and Japan. Speaking at the same conference in Berlin, Merz vowed to stand by Kyiv.
Ukraine's Umerov lauded Witkoff and Kushner for "working extremely constructively" for peace - and said the Ukrainians were "enormously grateful" to Trump.
Ukraine has sought to join NATO for years as a way to protect its independence, though the US and some European states have been unwilling to back its membership in the face of Russian hostility. Putin has repeatedly demanded that Ukraine abandon its goal of NATO membership as part of any peace deal. The Trump administration has already ruled out support for Ukrainian entry into the defense alliance.
Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov has made clear that Russia is unlikely to accept changes advanced by Europe and Ukraine to the US-led proposals that have been largely favorable to Moscow. Witkoff and Kushner held five hours of talks with Putin in Moscow on the plan on Dec. 2.
"If relevant amendments are made, we will have very strong objections, because we had outlined our position very clearly and the US seemed to have understood it," Ushakov said in pre-recorded remarks to state television broadcast on Sunday. "There will be provisions which are completely unacceptable for us, including on territorial issues."
European Union foreign ministers also plan talks on Ukraine at their meeting in Brussels on Monday. The bloc's foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas acknowledged to reporters that efforts to reach agreement on a reparations loan to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian state assets are growing increasingly difficult.
Meanwhile, the new chief of Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 accused Putin of deliberately prolonging negotiations to put an end to the war.
"We all continue to face the menace of an aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia, seeking to subjugate Ukraine and NATO members," Blaise Metreweli said in her first public appearance since she became head of MI6 in September. She said of Putin: "He is dragging out negotiations and shifting the cost of war onto his own population."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
