Donald Trump’s top Middle East envoy said that a trilateral meeting between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. was likely to occur in the days ahead but did not provide specifics regarding the deal reached between the president and Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
However U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff revealed that Putin agreed to allow the U.S. and its European allies to offer Ukraine a security guarantee at his meeting with Trump.
“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,” Witkoff told CNN.
He added that it “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that” and called them “game-changing.”
But the envoy wouldn’t specify whether the security guarantee could lead to what Trump and his followers have long opposed — a promise to directly engage U.S. troops in defense of Ukraine should Russia continue crossing Trump’s red lines.
Trump met with Putin for nearly three hours Friday at a U.S. military base in Anchorage. In their first meeting in six years the two leaders discussed the war in Ukraine. Trump has pushed for peace in the region but no ceasefire deal came out of the talks.
Also during the Sunday CNN interview, Witkoff declined to say whether a Russian demand for Ukraine to cede the entire occupied Donbas region was being considered by the U.S.
“There is an important discussion to be had with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there. And that discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday, when President Zelensky arrives with his delegation,” he said.
“We made so much progress at this meeting with regard to all the other ingredients necessary for a peace deal that President Trump pivoted to that place,” he continued. “We are intent on trying to hammer out a peace deal that ends the fighting permanently very, very quickly, quicker than a ceasefire.”
All eyes are now on Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky’s crucial meeting with Trump at the White House Monday. British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will join Zelensky, and other European leaders at the talks. Finnish president Alexander Stubb, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French president Emmanuel Macron are among those who will be on hand to prevent any flare-ups between the Ukrainian president and Trump.
Coverage of that meeting has largely centered around the theme of damage control, with European leaders insistent on having a seat at the table for future negotiations.
At the same time, the Trump administration is signaling that it will not put significant pressure on Russia to force a peace agreement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appearing separately Sunday on ABC, said that further sanctions on Russia were, for the time being, likely off the table.
“The minute you levy additional sanctions, strong, additional sanctions, the talking stops. Talking stops. And at that point, the war just continues,” Rubio said. He and Witkoff were part of th delegation to join Trump in Alaska for the summit.
Rubio added that meant “more people dead. More people killed. More people maimed. More families destroyed.”
Many Republicans have come out publicly to state that Trump was wrong about his assumption in February that Putin “wants peace” in Ukraine.
”I think he’s going to be very careful about what he does,” Sen. Mike Rounds said of Trump backing further Russian sanctions in early August. “But I think he is clearly disappointed in Putin and I think he is now coming around to recognizing that many of us were right.”
