U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that Russia agreed to allow “Article 5 security guarantees” for Ukraine during Friday’s meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump in Alaska.
Under NATO’s founding treaty, Article 5 protection means that any attack against one member country is considered an attack against all 32 members. While Ukraine is not part of NATO, its NATO-like security guarantee would be designed to deter future Russian aggression if the war ends via a peace deal brokered by the Trump administration.
Witkoff, who attended the Trump-Putin summit himself, said the United States was able to secure the concession from Russia despite its strong opposition to Ukraine’s NATO admission.
“We were able to win the following concession: that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” he told CNN host Jake Tapper on State of the Union on Sunday morning.
“We sort of were able to bypass that and get an agreement that the United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that,” he added.
If Russia were to violate a potential peace deal with its neighbor, the U.S. and its European allies might commit to coming to Ukraine’s defense under an agreement like NATO’s collective defense mandate.
European leaders largely support the Article 5 security guarantees for Ukraine, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying as much on Sunday alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels.
Zelensky, who will meet with Trump at the White House on Monday along with von der Leyen and several other European leaders, including NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, cast doubt on Putin’s offer of security guarantees.
“What President Trump said about security guarantees is much more important to me than Putin’s opinion,” Zelensky said at the Brussels press conference. “Putin will not give us any security guarantees.”
The Ukrainian president also pushed for clarity on what the reported security guarantees for his war-torn country would mean, including “whether there are ‘troops on the ground’” or “whether there is protection like in some other countries, in the sky.” Witkoff said the logistics will be discussed on Monday.
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While Trump has been ambiguous about whether he would uphold NATO’s Article 5, Rutte said at the NATO summit in June that he has no doubt about U.S. commitment to the alliance and Article 5.
Witkoff clarified the U.S. and European nations, not NATO itself, would directly provide the Article 5 security guarantees if agreed upon by Russia and Ukraine. The special envoy said the security concession from Russia was a “really big” breakthrough in the peace talks.
