Monday’s Ukraine summit in Washington has kicked off a flurry of activity as governments, diplomats and security officials try to predict where the cards will fall and prepare for next steps.
Chiefs of staff from the 32 NATO member countries gathered on Wednesday to debate the vague notion of “security guarantees” to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia, which emerged as a key sticking point in the talks with US President Donald Trump.
European leaders — among them Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, the UK’s Keir Starmer, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — on Monday sat alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a bid to influence Trump’s ongoing negotiations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
After the meeting, Trump also pledged to organise a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin, who have not met in person since 2019.
And while the mood in Brussels is significantly brighter this week than last — Merz told journalists that his "sceptical" expectations had been “more than met” and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called Trump's willingness to negotiate "a breakthrough” — there are still questions to be answered.
1. Will a Putin–Zelenskyy summit take place, and if so where?
Trump initially suggested a three-way summit with Putin and Zelenskyy, but told reporters this week that "it would be better" if the two leaders initially met without him.
There are strong reasons to doubt that a summit will take place because Russia has not committed to it, Nicholas Williams, a former high-ranking NATO official, told The Parliament.
“When the Americans suggest things like a summit, the Russians say ‘okay, we can work on that’ but they don't say ‘okay we'll agree on that,'" Williams said. “It's a basic misunderstanding of the Russian stalling tactics.”
Meeting Trump in Alaska last Friday, Putin said he was open to talks with Zelenskyy. But Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov walked back those comments on Russian TV this week, saying that any talks needed to be arranged with the “utmost care.”
Where the meeting might take place is a thorny topic, given that Putin is personally subject to an international arrest warrant for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Under the 1998 Rome Statute, signatories are obliged to arrest Putin on their soil and transfer him to The Hague.
Macron and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani signalled that Geneva could be an appropriate host — and Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis announced that Switzerland was “ready for such a meeting.” Legally, Geneva could host such a summit despite Putin’s ICC arrest warrant due to its status as the European headquarters of the UN.
A report by Politico suggests that the Trump administration favours Budapest for talks. That is where the 1994 Budapest Memorandum was signed between the US, UK and Russia to pledge security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Russia broke that treaty when it annexed Crimea in 2014.
Putin would be likely to favour Moscow — and said as much to Trump in an apparently off-the-cuff remark, in English, at last Friday’s press conference.
2. Who wants a ceasefire, and who wants a peace treaty?
Zelenskyy and European leaders want a ceasefire. Russia wants a peace deal.
Europe is pushing for a ceasefire to create space for negotiations and humanitarian relief. “The Europeans and the Ukrainians particularly favour an immediate ceasefire to show and demonstrate that Putin is not sincere for peace,” said Williams.
Recent Russian advances on the battlefield, and Ukrainian shortages of manpower and ammunition, no doubt also play into this calculation. A ceasefire would give the defenders time to regroup and resupply.
But Trump, after meeting with Putin, dropped his previous support for a ceasefire and advocated for a peace deal instead. Posting on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday, he said he intended to “go directly to a Peace Agreement,” and that a "mere Ceasefire Agreement" risked breaking down.
An immediate long-term treaty would likely force Ukraine to make major concessions, including ceding the Donbas region and giving up hopes of NATO membership.
“The Russians have always been clear about their objectives … they say that the root causes of the problem must be resolved, which in effect means ceding territory, ceding NATO membership and neutralising the Ukrainian ability to ever mount a defence again,” Williams added.
3. Which countries are pledging troops for Ukraine?
Trump has ruled out putting US troops on the ground in Ukraine.
The UK and France assembled an informal “coalition of the willing” earlier this year, and have both pledged to put boots on the ground to guarantee a peace deal. Estonia's Prime Minister Kristen Michal also reaffirmed Tallinn’s willingness to contribute troops this week.
Other members of that coalition have been more circumspect. Belgium might contribute to a multilateral peace-keeping force in the case of a durable peace deal, Prime Minister Bart de Wever said back in March. An adviser to the Lithuanian president said this week that Vilnius was prepared to send troops in a peacekeeping-style deployment.
None of these pledges amount to a mutual defence agreement of the sort shared by NATO members. Unlike NATO’s Article 5, there is no binding treaty and no automatic trigger that forces countries to respond. Instead, each government decides for itself what level of support to provide, and when.
“If you want to give a real security guarantee, you have to have the troops that are committed. You have to visibly demonstrate that they're committed, that they are a force to be reckoned with,” said Williams. “They have to have plans and a command structure.”
At best, Kyiv gets a patchwork of promises: Some countries might send troops, others might limit their role to training, weapons, or money. Without a formal treaty, the only way to guarantee that foreign troops would attempt to repel a renewed invasion would be to station them on the front lines, in harm’s way.
4. What happens if the US drops out?
The European leaders flanking Zelenskyy in Washington this week read like a diplomatic bodyguard detail, after his last visit to the White House ended in acrimony. But whether the display of unity would survive a US abandonment of Ukraine is less clear.
European officials have begun discussing what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like, but those plans remain dependent on US involvement. “The Europeans are still depending on Trump,” Williams said. “They don’t have any independent idea for themselves how they’re going to deal with Russia on the European continent without the US.”
The Anglo-French “coalition of the willing” is missing some members. Hungary and Slovakia, both EU and NATO members, have not joined. Austria, Malta and Switzerland, which are not NATO members, are also absent.
Differences are already visible. The UK has tied its position closely to Washington, while France has argued for greater European autonomy — though both still see US backing as essential. Germany, for its part, has yet to set out how it would respond if Washington were to step back.
5. What might security guarantees look like?
After Monday’s meeting, Zelenskyy said Ukraine and its allies were "already working on the concrete content of the security guarantees."
The US has not committed to play a substantive role. “During the meeting we discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, which guarantees would be provided by the various European countries, with a coordination with the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Monday’s meeting.
Members of the “coalition of the willing” have put forward a number of options. One is policing Ukraine’s airspace, which would be done by placing planes on existing air bases in Poland or Romania. Coalition countries could also help patrol the Black Sea, which Russia is looking to dominate.
Promising security guarantees on land is difficult. Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe, behind Russia, and the frontline is some 1,200km long.
Without solid US support, EU formations are limited in scale and lack many battlefield enablers, such as intelligence support and strategic lift, that are currently only provided by the US.
“A long-term security guarantee for Ukraine requires a long- term commitment and substantial forces,” said Williams.
6. What does the $100 billion US arms deal mean?
As with many negotiations that involve Trump, security guarantees come hand-in-hand with commercial arms deals for the US.
Ukraine has promised to buy $100 billion of US weapons, financed by Europe, in a bid to obtain US security guarantees, the Financial Times reported.
The deal would also include an agreement between Kyiv and Washington worth $50 billion to produce drones with Ukrainian companies that have pioneered the technology since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
As part of NATO's new Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative, Germany and other allies have also pledged to fund support packages totalling up to $500 million.
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