Guaranteeing Insecurity: The Flaws in Ukraine’s Security Talks

President Zelenskyy might justifiably feel pleased that his meetings in the US this week have resulted in headlines on security guarantees, with images of European leaders standing by his side. The contrast could hardly be more stark with the shouting match into which his previous visit descended, especially as that was followed by a temporary hiatus in US intelligence support to Ukraine. But this is a low bar to clear, and after these talks and the discussions in Alaska between Presidents Trump and Putin, there is still much to clarify in terms of international support for Ukraine, and the extent to which this will make an end to the fighting more likely.

The Fog of Negotiations

The issue of the day is what form any ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine will take, and what the means of enforcement will be. It is not immediately obvious what was discussed with the Russians in Alaska, nor to what they agreed. The fact that so many European leaders travelled to the US on Monday and highlighted the issue suggests significant concern over the shifting US position, but also a sense that an opportunity might have presented itself. This followed the evolution of President Trump’s position over the weekend, from threatening sanctions or ‘very severe consequences’ if Russia didn’t agree to a ceasefire, to talking about a peace deal (with fighting still continuing in the meantime).

In spite of some optimistic headlines suggesting a deployment of US forces to ‘protect’ Ukraine, Trump was clear that Europe was the ‘first line of defence’ for Ukraine, a stance consistent with his desire to shift more of the responsibility on to European countries for security in their own ‘backyard’. European leaders have continued to develop their ‘Coalition of the Willing’, but the form and function of a European force now seems to have been scaled back from some of the early ambitions. That deterrent force, which might have had a land component of around divisional strength (15,000-20,000 personnel) was feasible from within European combat power, but only if backed by significant willpower and resources, and – in the short-term – at a cost to other NATO commitments.

Europe is Trying to Play a Weak Hand Well

Now, instead of a significant force with combat power and a strong deterrent capability, something focussed on helping Ukraine rebuild and restructure its forces now seems to be on the cards. This probably reflects a compromise after the bind that Europe finds itself in; unhappy at having decisions about European security being made in Washington, DC, but lacking the military strength at the moment to force an alternative approach. In that respect, getting into the conversation with the US, and convincing Trump that Europe can shoulder more of the burden can at least be regarded as a limited success, along with successfully getting access to a mechanism to buy more US equipment for Ukraine, using European funding (or perhaps at some point frozen Russian funds).

A capacity-building force would be able to better plan and direct the flow of international military equipment into Ukraine, improve the feedback loop on lessons from Ukrainian forces and remove delays in training, especially if some of the larger training programmes like Operation INTERFLEX in the UK were moved into Ukraine. But the deterrent value of a small force like this is dubious, given its lack of its intrinsic combat capability. This poses the question of what else would be deployed.

Air policing and maritime activity (where mine clearance would be especially valuable) have both been suggested, but to deter Russian aggression, such deployments would need to be able to use force and also bring a threat of entangling wider NATO forces. Having consistently argued that such a deployment would require US support, European leaders have created a hostage to fortune (or perhaps just reflected reality), relying on Trump to first agree and then force such an arrangement upon the Russians in his talks. Trump has unsurprisingly ruled out a major US ground presence, but his claim to be willing to be involved might mean that the US intelligence flow to Ukraine remains in place, and that US personnel and forces will continue to provide logistics support for weapons and equipment being delivered to Ukraine.

The suggested plan to spend $100 billion of European money on more weapons from the US helps address challenges on air defences, and keeps US interests engaged, but this all represents – at best – an attempt at deterrence by denial in terms of making Ukraine better able to defend itself, akin to what has been called a ‘steel porcupine’. In addition, the sum mentioned is four times that committed by European countries at the most recent Ukraine Defence Contact Group and greater than the value of European military support to Ukraine since the war started. While welcome, it is unlikely to be spent quickly given spending limits amongst European countries also trying to rebuild their militaries, and there will also be industrial capacity constraints.

‘Article 5-lite’ is a Mirage

The follow-up conversations on 19 August amongst members of the Coalition of the Willing strongly suggest that they do not know what form the security guarantees will take and are still working on them. An optimist might say this means there is still an opportunity to take a firm approach; a more realistic analysis might be that Europeans are struggling to agree on the risks, and are depending on an unreliable US partner for insurance.

In particular, there has been no details on what was meant when officials referred to security guarantees akin to NATO Article 5, without Ukraine having NATO membership. It seems implausible that the US or Europe, having preferred to avoid direct confrontation with Russian forces so far, would wait until after a cessation of violence to then be more aggressive and take risks. Indeed, Trump has consistently been clear he does not see it as worth the US risk to confront Russia, somewhat undercutting the impressive flyover display in Alaska. The Russians are unlikely to fear US airpower if they do not think it will be used against them.

It is equally implausible that the Russians would – as Steve Witkoff, the US President’s special envoy, claimed – agree to guarantees based around an Article 5-type solution given the extent to which that would lock in the very Western influence they have sought to eject. This leaves open the possibility that what has been discussed are ‘guarantees’ that look worryingly like the kind of ‘assurances’ involving Russia given under the Budapest Memorandum, or were proposed as part of the failed negotiations in Istanbul in 2022, which gave Russia a role as a guarantor – a wholly unacceptable situation now.

At best, perhaps what has been agreed is wording on a commitment to ‘consult’ in the event of a Russian attack that reads a lot like NATO Article 5. The problem with this approach is that if it proves to be flimsy, it encourages those who are sceptical of the current US Administrations commitment to the ‘real’ Article 5. More credible than a direct military threat might be a guarantee that if Russia attacked again there would be more US sanctions, increased European military support, and an end to European purchasing of Russian energy, but the US Secretary of State has undermined the former, and the latter will require Europe to invest more in energy diversification.

From the Ukrainian perspective, setting a clear dividing line between ‘acceptable’ behaviour and that which warrants Western military action (and therefore creating the conditions necessary for clear and credible communication leading to deterrence) also necessitates defining the geographic area to be defended. This means even more emphasis will be on where the ‘line of contact’ (an increasingly blurred line at that) sits at the point when fighting ends, and whether ground concessions are made as part of any agreement.

Are Ukraine’s Partners Fiddling While Kyiv Burns?

This all may be an academic argument if neither the Europeans nor the US have a means of compelling the Russians to actually negotiate, rather than just talk as a means of eating up time. With the idea of a ceasefire currently bypassed (but re-opened this week by both Chancellor Merz and President Macron) the fighting continues, with heavy strikes on Tuesday. July included some of the largest air strikes since the start of the war, and in August they continue at a level well above that seen at the start of the year, indicative of expanded production, especially of Geran-2 drones/cruise missiles.

Meanwhile, there is also heavy ground pressure on the Ukrainians, especially in the east, and around the very areas of the Donbas that Putin has reportedly made his priority in terms of so-called land swaps. Ukrainian lines have become increasingly stretched and are now covered by small bands of infantry, hundreds of metres apart using drones to cover frontages of several kilometres with both surveillance or strike capabilities. In many cases the opposing forces have become intermingled as the Russians try and move between Ukrainian position on foot and take up new positions. New Russian tactics on handling drones, led by its ‘Rubikon’ unit formed in 2024, are endeavouring to unpick Ukraine’s defensive ‘drone wall’, developing solutions and technology to both target Ukrainian drone operators and hit high value targets and logistics to isolate Ukrainian defenders in the face of Russian attacks.

That all means that the momentum of the war on the ground lies with Russia, even if it comes at a fearsome cost in lives and materiel, and at a rate that it is calculated would still take several years to fully capture the rest of the oblasts illegally annexed by Russia (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson). That rate has picked up in July and August, and the recent small ‘breakthrough’ by Russian forces north of Pokvrosk (probably now contained) shows it is an indicator of relative strengths, rather than a prediction of the future. But it also undercuts Putin’s demands to be given at a stroke something that he is struggling to take by force.

For the Ukrainians to lose their ‘fortress belt’ would result in the (probably permanent) displacement of several hundred thousand civilians, and the loss of their most extensively fortified and resourced defences in the east, opening up Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk to future attacks, with a need to start again on reinforcing their positions. Indeed, the fact that this demand was made at all, knowing this, is probably an indicator that the Russians feel they can continue to drive forward, exhausting the Ukrainian capacity to defend, and international willpower to keep providing support, playing on Trump’s impatience. The very description of ‘land swaps’ when all the land under consideration is Ukrainian could be seen as a calculated insult to the Ukrainians by the Russians, and Putin’s reference at Alaska to the ‘underlying causes’ of the war are a truer indicator of where his objectives lie.

The ‘Least Worst’ Approach

If this seems like a somewhat confused description of the talks, it is because the talks are probably confusing! As much as anything, they provide a counter to the argument before Trump took over for a second time that his unpredictability would strengthen his negotiating hand. As he has admitted himself, ‘solving’ the Russia-Ukraine war has been harder than he thought it would, and the parties most susceptible to his approach are the cautious Europeans, not the Russians. The success of the past week has been that the Ukrainians and Europeans have avoided being forced into accepting Putin’s terms, or the trap of being seen as responsible for stymying talks. Their challenge is to remain engaged in a process where the constant danger of collapse is being held over the Ukrainians, while doing all they can to improve Ukraine’s position on the battlefield.

That probably involves several strands of activity: encouraging Trump to hold Russia accountable for not engaging sincerely and joining him enforcing and expanding sanctions if necessary; helping Ukraine unpick and threaten Russia’s military-industrial complex through a combination of more deep strikes and disruption of that industry; and supporting the regeneration of Ukraine’s armed forces, both defensively and so they can halt Russia on the ground and put pressure on Russia’s capacity to fight on into 2026. None of these will ‘win’ the war, or address the issue of Russian control of Crimea, but they provide a route to the least-worst outcome of rejecting the current Russian approach whilst maintaining some room to manoeuvre.

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