Russia indicates it’s open to Ukraine joining EU as part of peace deal to end war, U.S. officials say

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne speaks to reporters about the war in Ukraine and Canada’s role in the peacekeeping process.

BERLIN --The U.S. has agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal to end Russia’s nearly four-year war, and more talks are likely this weekend, U.S. officials said Monday following the latest discussions with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin.

The officials said talks with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, led to narrowing differences on security guarantees that Kyiv said must be provided, as well as on Moscow’s demand that Ukraine concede land in the Donbas region in the country’s east.

Trump dialed into a dinner Monday evening with negotiators and European leaders, and more talks are expected this weekend in Miami or elsewhere in the United States, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly by the White House.

“I think we’re closer now than we have been, ever,” Trump told reporters at an unrelated White House event. He added, “We’re having tremendous support from European leaders. They want to get it ended, also.”

The U.S. officials said the offer of security guarantees won’t be on the table “forever.” They said the Trump administration plans to put forward the agreement on guarantees for Senate approval, although they didn’t specify whether it would be ratified like a treaty, which needs the chamber’s two-thirds approval.

In a statement, European leaders in Berlin said they and the U.S. committed to work together to provide “robust security guarantees,” including a European-led “multinational force Ukraine” supported by the U.S.

They said the force’s work would include “operating inside Ukraine” as well as assisting in rebuilding Ukraine’s forces, securing its skies and supporting safer seas. They said Ukrainian forces should remain at a peacetime level of 800,000.

Witkoff and Kushner were accompanied by U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who heads NATO’s military operations and the U.S. European Command, as talks honed in on the particulars of what the U.S. officials described as an “Article 5-like” security agreement. Article Five in the NATO treaty is the collective defence clause stating that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

The U.S. side presented the Ukrainians a document that spelled out in greater specificity aspects of the proposed U.S. security guarantees -- something that Ukrainian officials said was missing from earlier iterations of the U.S. peace proposal, according to U.S. officials.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called it a “truly far-reaching, substantial agreement that we did not have before, namely that both Europe and the U.S. are jointly prepared to do this.”

Questions over Ukraine’s postwar security and the fate of occupied territories have been the main obstacles in talks. Zelenskyy has emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, Russia has said it will not accept any troops from NATO countries being based on Ukrainian soil.

Zelenskyy on Monday called the talks “substantial” and noted that differences remain on the issue of territory.

Zelenskyy has expressed readiness to drop Ukraine’s bid to join NATO if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine’s preference remains NATO membership as the best security guarantee to prevent further Russian aggression.

Ukraine has continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of the Donetsk region still under its control as a key condition for peace.

The U.S. officials on Monday said there is consensus on about 90 per cent of the U.S.-authored peace plan, and that Russia has indicated it is open to Ukraine joining the European Union, something it previously said it did not object to.

The Russian president has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, however, as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.

Asked whether the negotiations could be over by Christmas, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal was a “thankless task.”

“I can only speak for the Russian side, for President Putin,” Peskov said. “He is open to peace, to a serious peace and serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time.”

Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.

Drone strikes continue

Russia fired 153 drones of various types at Ukraine overnight Sunday into Monday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said 133 drones were neutralized, while 17 more hit their targets.

In Russia, the Defence Ministry on Monday said forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones overnight. An additional 16 drones were destroyed between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time.

Eighteen drones were shot down over Moscow itself, the defense ministry said. Flights were temporarily halted at the city’s Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports as part of safety measures, officials said.

Damage details and casualty figures were not immediately available.

By Stefanie Dazio And Aamer Madhani, The Associated Press

Madhani contributed from Washington. Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.