Trump administration officials met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for several hours in Berlin on Sunday and again on Monday.
Trump administration officials said Monday that U.S. negotiators are making significant strides toward a peace deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war, revealing that Moscow is open to Ukrainian membership in the European Union and predicting that Russian negotiators will soon be willing to accept robust security guarantees for Ukraine.
Trump administration officials met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for several hours in Berlin on Sunday and again on Monday, and both parties characterized the meetings as positive.
The U.S. delegation, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has long signaled that NATO membership is not on the table for Ukraine as part of a Trump-brokered deal to end the war.
However, a U.S. official told reporters on Monday that the basis of the U.S.-proposed agreement is to have “Article 5-like” security guarantees for Ukraine along with “very, very strong” military weaponry for deterrence purposes. The security guarantees are “something that President Trump believes he can get Russia to accept,” the official added.
Russian negotiators have also come around on Ukrainian membership in the EU, U.S. officials said, a significant concession given the economic implications of membership.
“Russia, you know, in a final deal, has indicated they were open to Ukraine joining the EU, which would be, I think, the biggest expansion of the Euro free zone since the Berlin Wall.”
Roughly 90 percent of all outstanding issues have been negotiated successfully, U.S. officials said, signaling on Monday’s call that Ukraine should accept the deal before the proposed security guarantees expire as a negotiating offer. “Those guarantees will not be on the table forever. Those guarantees are on the table right now,” the official said.
U.S. officials declined on Monday’s call to get into specifics about what “Article 5-like” U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine would look like, whether Ukraine will need to cede more territory to Russia than it has already, and whether there exists a hard deadline for Russia to respond.
U.S. officials have spent recent days brainstorming with European officials how to resolve territorial disputes between Ukraine and Russian and have also discussed the prospect of an “economic free zone” in the war-torn territory and how it might operate. “Ultimately, if we can get that defined, then it will really be up to the parties to work out the final issues of sovereignty and to see if there’s deal that can be done between them,” a U.S. official said.
Ongoing disputes over territory come as multiple news outlets reported on Monday that U.S. officials are reportedly demanding that Ukraine with draw from the Donetsk region as a condition of any U.S.-brokered deal.
And Russia has signaled that territorial concessions to Ukraine are a nonstarter in any U.S.-brokered peace deal. “If relevant amendments are made, we will have very strong objections, because we had outlined our position very clearly and the U.S. seemed to have understood it,” Russian security official Yuri Ushakov said in a Kremlin television broadcast on Sunday. “There will be provisions which are completely unacceptable for us, including on territorial issues.”
U.S. officials on Monday’s call namechecked the Germans, English, and French as strong partners who have helped push the negotiations forward as part of a “full U.S.-Europe effort” to end the war. According to U.S. officials, the Europeans have expressed appreciation during the Berlin talks that Trump is open to security guarantees for Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that talks have been tense behind closed doors, with the U.S. side expressing an unwillingness to compromise on its draft 20-point peace agreement.
The U.S.-brokered plan would also include a postwar economic strategy to rebuild Ukraine, officials said. On the rebuilding front, Trump administration officials have also expressed hope in recent days that Russia can join the global economy so that the country has an incentive to not go back to war in the future.
“We’ve seen over time, there’s no such thing as permanent allies or permanent enemies,” a U.S. official said on Monday’s call. “And maybe, if we create the right framework in this agreement, then there could be a new pathway forward where Europe and Russia can finally have an arrangement and understanding that can lead to a more peaceful and prosperous future for everyone.”
This week’s talks in Berlin come as Trump continues to signal an impatience with both sides that negotiations have stalled. “The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war, and he is sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week.