BURSTSecurity guarantees for Ukraine are emerging this week as a central component to any deal that might end the long war between Russia and Ukraine.
When the war started in 2022, Ukraine had hoped to enter NATO, which would have given it Article 5 assurances under which an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on every member.
NATO membership is now on hold, but President Trump’s point person for talks with the Kremlin, Steve Witkoff, has said that the U.S. could participate in “Article 5-like protections” for Ukraine.
Trump on Monday called it a significant step that Russia had agreed that the U.S. and European countries could provide Ukraine with security guarantees, but he appeared to keep any assurances vague and downplayed the possibility of the guarantees being on par with NATO.
“I don't know if you define it that way — NATO-like,” said Trump, who met at the White House on Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders.
A spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow rejects ideas for putting troops from NATO member states on Ukrainian soil.
Zelensky wants as much of a guarantee as he can get after his country has been repeatedly attacked by Russia.
“Everything,” Zelensky said, giving his interpretation of what should be included in the guarantees. Everything could include Western troops on the ground, intelligence sharing and a commitment to deliver military equipment.
There are various schools of thought on what U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine could or should look like.
“Article 5 is not a be all and end all. It is intentionally vague,” said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution who authored a piece in 2024 about options for security guarantees for Ukraine.
Here’s a look at some of the main schools of thought.
America First ideas
Trump has relied on his special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in crafting his administration’s strategy on the war.
Kellogg is an alumni of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank founded to advance the president’s “America first” agenda. Along with AFPI fellow Frederick Fleitz, who served as chief of staff at the National Security Council in Trump’s first term, Kellogg reportedly presented a plan to the president in June laying out how to get Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
Fleitz told Reuters that “arming Ukraine to the teeth” was part of security guarantees for Kyiv.
This could be achieved through Trump’s so-called deal to sell U.S. weapons to NATO and for NATO to transfer those weapons to Ukraine.
“We're not giving anything. We're selling weapons,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.
Trump said Europe would take the lead on providing the first line of defense but said the U.S. would be helping.
'Mainstream' security ideas
Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, published a report in April on a five-layered security guarantee for Ukraine. He said it represents a centrist approach that the mainstream policy crowd in Washington could get behind and provides meaningful U.S. support that would not drain U.S. resources.
“The initial reaction by any pro-Ukraine person would be, 'Well, let's get them into NATO.' Well, I want them into NATO too, but let's be honest, with Trump, that's not going to happen. So I'm trying to come up with the most realistic possibility,” he said.
Under this approach, U.S. forces could be used to help European countries defend Ukraine. This could include air-to-air refueling, intelligence sharing, Black Sea patrols and the prepositioning of U.S. forces outside Ukraine for potential deployment in a crisis, Coffey wrote in the report, which was published in April.
Coffey also calls for restarting the National Guard State Partnership Program with Ukraine. The partnership promotes military-to-military engagement with America’s allies abroad, and since 1993, the California National Guard has partnered with Ukraine. But that partnership froze with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“That could be a way to ease U.S. boots back onto the ground,” Coffey said, noting they usually do two-week rotations for training.
Coffey spoke out against a bilateral U.S.-Ukraine security agreement, saying if people wanted to commit American troops to Ukraine’s defense it would make more sense to just admit Ukraine to NATO.
Coffey said the risks for the U.S. would depend on the scenario.
“This isn’t without risk, the U.S. could get dragged in, in a sense, depending on the scenario, but then you’d have Russia at war with France, Germany, the U.K and maybe Italy,” he said.
‘Realism and restraint’
The Quincy Institute, established in 2019, bills itself as putting forward policy ideas in Washington that offer “realism and restraint,” said Mark Episkopos, a research fellow in its Eurasia Program.
Episkopos said Article 5-like guarantees for Ukraine could look a lot like the support that is already being provided but “with some additional steps.”
“These may include a no-fly zone, provision of more advanced weaponry, and limited rearguard deployments of European troops. The U.S. contribution would likely center on logistics, aerial support, military aid, and provision of targeting data, all key roles which do not require U.S. boots on the ground,” Episkopos said, echoing some of Coffey’s ideas.
“While this proposal does not commit Western troops to defend Ukraine, neither does it close the door on such intervention, introducing a kind of strategic ambiguity that can itself be a deterrent against a Russian reinvasion,” he continued.
Isolationists in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement want to ensure the U.S. is not drawn into another major war on behalf of another country.
Opponents – the MAGA Isolationists
“I’ve never voted to send a single penny to Ukraine. I’ve only called for peace,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a MAGA firebrand, posted on X in July.
Greene’s full-throated opposition for aid to Ukraine represents is a bit of an outlier position in Congress, where a majority of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle view U.S. support for Ukraine as in America’s national security interest.
Charlie Kirk, another leading personality in MAGA-world, pushed U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker to oppose Article 5-like security guarantees in an interview on Monday.
“The perspective of my audience, and for me, is we don't want America involved at all,” he said.
Whitaker in the interview sold the president’s line, that Europe is taking charge of its security by increasing its defense spending and purchasing weapons from the U.S., and pushed back on Kirk’s assertions that Europe was only interested in continuing the war.
“This is my perspective as the US ambassador to NATO, I don't see that Europe wants to continue, to continue this war,” he said.
“I think President Trump's just trying to see if there's a set of circumstances where he can bring this to an end.”