According to the Trump administration, the broad outlines of Vladimir Putin’s proposal to end the war in Ukraine are coming into focus. Ukraine would give Russia control of approximately 6,600 square kilometers, or 12 percent, of the Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) in eastern Ukraine—this includes territory that Russia does not now occupy. Russia would leave approximately 440 square kilometers of territory in Sumy and Kharkiv. That “land swap” on its own would be an impossible sell to the Ukrainians. But Donald Trump’s team is touting progress in another area, claiming that Putin would be open to a European security guarantee, including a military presence inside Ukraine, with an “American backstop” (although no U.S. troops would be in Ukraine).
European leaders will join President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, D.C., today to flesh out what a security guarantee would look like. A European official with knowledge of the briefings told me that if an agreement can be reached with the Russians on its specifics, negotiations on territorial questions would follow. Trump is pushing for a trilateral summit with Putin and Zelensky within a week to seal the deal, but the Europeans believe they will need more time—at least a few weeks—to figure out the details and see if there is a viable way forward.
As Putin looked at the coverage of the summit and Trump’s optimism that peace may be close, he may well have had the same reaction as Alan Greenspan when he testified to the Senate as the chair of the Federal Reserve: “I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I said.” It’s very possible that, far from achieving a breakthrough, the Trump administration simply misread what the Russians said and they haven’t changed their position at all. That’s the risk of not having the proposal in writing and having negotiators who are not familiar with Moscow’s diplomatic track record on the war.
Start with what Russia is demanding. The Financial Times reported that “according to four people with direct knowledge of the talks” in Friday’s summit, Putin “demanded Ukraine withdraw from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as a condition for ending Russia’s war but told Donald Trump he could freeze the rest of the frontline if his core demands were met.”
The phrase if his core demands were met is crucial. Russia presented a memo at the June 2 talks with Ukraine in Istanbul that contains the basic parameters of a final settlement. In addition to international recognition of Russian sovereignty of Crimea, the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, it includes severe caps on the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces and the cessation of Western military aid to Ukraine.
These demands, which would amount to Ukraine’s subjugation, are impossible for Ukraine to accept. To date, the Trump administration has rejected them too. In May, Vice President J. D. Vance told Fox News that the Russians were asking for “too much,” adding that “Russia can’t expect to be given territory that they haven’t even conquered yet.”
On Friday, if the Trump administration’s account of the talks is correct, Putin seems to have pared back his demands a tiny bit. He is insisting on Ukrainian withdrawal from two regions instead of four. But there is no sign that he is moving away from his demands about limits on the size of the Ukrainian military.
Putin’s apparent concession on security guarantees may not be all the Trump administration thinks it is. In the original talks in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, Russia presented a plan for an external security guarantee for Ukraine that would give Moscow an effective veto over whether it is ever invoked. Moscow very likely still has that in mind—in which case, there was no progress in Friday’s summit. Even if it is moving off that idea, it may well link any security guarantee to severe limits on the size of the Ukrainian military.
A security guarantee should mean that if Ukraine is attacked by Russia again, the guarantors will join it in the war against Russia. If that guarantee is provided by Europe, it would mean that European states would fight Russia without the support of the United States. The Europeans have worried for some time that this is fraught with peril. Such a war would give Putin the chance to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, potentially permanently breaking the NATO alliance.
This is where the “American backstop” comes in. The idea is that if European forces are attacked, the U.S. would come to their aid. But it’s not clear what that means. If Europe has committed to defend Ukraine in the event of an invasion, then a U.S. backstop would mean that America would join it in fighting Russia, albeit possibly just with air power. That comes very close to a NATO Article 5 guarantee. The U.S. Russia envoy, Steve Witkoff, suggested yesterday that the administration is looking at such a guarantee outside of the NATO context, but it is very hard to imagine that Trump will be on board with that.
A weaker version of the backstop is that European forces would be present in Ukraine without a commitment to fight Russia if it invaded again. They would instead focus on helping train and equip Ukrainian troops and creating a sense of ambiguity in Moscow about the potential for a wider war if Russia restarted the war. In this case, the Trump administration would likely interpret a backstop as requiring European troops to be given safe haven in Ukraine if Russia attacked, or that the U.S. would help them leave safely.
Under present U.S. leadership, a credible external security guarantee for Ukraine seems extremely unlikely. The Europeans will not commit to fighting Russia without the United States, and Trump will never agree to join them.
The only credible guarantee for Ukraine in current circumstances is a national one: that the West would help Ukraine build a force capable of defending the country and deterring a future attack. That means a massive military build-up following a cease-fire, including a long-range-strike capability, to demonstrate to Moscow that another invasion would fail and would weaken Russia significantly. If that is secured, a European presence inside Ukraine to help train and equip their forces would be helpful. But there is no sign that Moscow has moved off of its demands for Ukrainian demilitarization. If Moscow’s apparent willingness to allow a small number of European troops into Ukraine is a smoke screen to get Trump to embrace demilitarization, he needs to reject it outright.
That brings us back to territory. Putin’s demand for the Donbas is tactically clever because it is designed to give the Trump administration false hope that if Ukraine cedes this territory, the war will be over. Already, Trump has abandoned his calls for a cease-fire and his plans to impose additional sanctions on Russia. It also obscures Russia’s other core demands and is designed to drive a wedge between the United States and Ukraine. Ukraine will be extremely reluctant to give up territory and vital defensive lines that Russia would take years to get on the battlefield, if it could take them at all—and by putting Zelensky in a position where he will feel compelled to refuse an unreasonable demand, Putin hopes to convince Trump that it is Zelensky who stands in the way of peace.
Instead of trying to figure out how to make a security guarantee work, the Trump administration needs to first clarify Moscow’s position on Ukraine’s demilitarization, preferably in writing. If it is sticking to its June 2 position, the talks are just a ruse to buy time and weaken America’s resolve. If Moscow is willing to accept Ukraine’s right to defend itself, talks could take place on changes to the territorial line of control on a reciprocal basis—for every square mile Ukraine gives up, Russia would give up a square mile of similar value.
Ultimately, the diplomatic problem the Trump administration faces is how to persuade Russia to accept an independent and sovereign Ukraine. All the signs from Moscow are that it has not backed off from a maximalist position. The only plausible way to end the war is to create a battlefield reality that convinces Putin that he cannot make more gains, that he will pay a massive price for continuing the war, and that this reality is unlikely to change. That means that the United States and its allies need to, paradoxically, get serious about arming Ukraine for a protracted conflict and putting pressure on Russia. That is the only way to create the conditions for successful negotiations to end the war.
