Key Points and Summary: After meeting Vladimir Putin and then hosting Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, President Donald Trump is feeling his way toward a Ukraine endgame.
-The emerging formula is “Article 5 lite”: NATO-style security guarantees for Kyiv if it accepts limited territorial losses.
President Donald Trump plays golf in the Senior Club Championship at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Jupiter, Florida. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)
-Because Putin’s assurances lack credibility, Ukraine would demand a serious, enforceable warranty.
-With nuclear backing off the table, that could mean a visible U.S. ground presence alongside Europeans to deter renewed attack.
-The risks of escalation are real, but without a major guarantee Kyiv has little reason to concede—leaving Trump with a hard truth: no warranty, no peace.
Trump is Feeling His Way toward a Ukraine Peace
Yesterday, United States President Donald Trump received the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and a clutch of allied European leaders in the White House. This meeting followed Trump’s parallel meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin a few days earlier. As Alexander Motyl of the National Security Journal noted, the tone of these events has veered wildly.
Trump clearly likes Putin in excess and wants to re-normalize US relations with Russia. But he also seems to realize that a Russian victory would be widely perceived as a defeat for the West, including the US. Trump himself may not share that assessment, but much of the Western commentariat does. Trump would face crushing media criticism if he abandons Ukraine. Trump is old enough to remember how Vietnam destroyed the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and how the withdrawal from Afghanistan permanently tarred President Joseph Biden’s legacy.
Article 5 Lite
The answer to this dilemma, emerging from the past week, seems to be a ‘NATO-like’ commitment to Ukrainian security if Ukraine accepts limited territorial cessions. Article 5 of NATO’s founding Washington Treaty is the relevant clause. It is the collective security arrangement that states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all members.
This is what Ukraine desperately wants, and it is a move that much of NATO is nervous about extending. It would require NATO to fight Russia if Putin attacked Ukraine again, which he has already done twice in the last decade. As both Russia and NATO are nuclear-armed, there is an obvious risk of catastrophic escalation.
Conversely, there is no reason for Ukraine to stop fighting, much less make painful territorial concessions, without some kind of external security commitment. Putin’s word that he will not attack again is not credible. Zelensky, wisely, wants some sort of security assistance guarantee from the Western democracies.
Only the likelihood that the West will be pulled more directly into a renewed Russo-Ukrainian war will likely deter Putin from attacking yet again.
Just How Much Will the US Commit to Ukrainian Security?
For Trump to end the war, he needs to get both combatants to cease fighting. Much of the discussion has focused on getting Ukraine to accept territorial losses in exchange for a cease-fire. As Robert Farley notes, it is tough to see how Ukraine recovers the territory that it has lost, so this might be a concession Ukraine can realistically make to get valuable counter-concessions from Russia.
But territorial loss is the crux of the war, of course. Legitimizing Putin’s snatching of Crimea in 2014 and Donbas in 2022 sends terrible signals to other would-be aggressors—namely that the aggressors can get away with it if they move fast enough and then refuse to budge. China, obviously, would see this as a lesson regarding Taiwan.
And for Ukraine, the losses would be painful—more than ten percent of its territory as recognized by the United Nations and by Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Official territorial cessions would also likely involve population transfers. Ukraine would also have to surrender territory not yet conquered and thick with defensive emplacements.
President Donald Trump signs executive orders alongside Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and wounded warriors in the Oval Office, Wednesday, April 23, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
In short, there is no reason for Ukraine to accept such substantial losses without a major, compensating NATO commitment—almost certainly including an American one. Trump will not like this, but there is realistically no other way to push Ukraine to formally surrender these territories.
The US commitment will not be nuclearized, as it is with NATO, but it will likely have to include a US military ground contingent. A European presence would be beneficial, allowing the US to finally pivot to Asia. But a fractious European multilateral deployment highly dependent on US logistics will not be enough to deter Putin and satisfy the Ukrainians. It has to be Americans.
This is the dilemma Trump faces and likely why his approach to the war veers so erratically and why he so often blames Biden for a war he wishes would just go away. He does not want to deal with this, and he does not want another US commitment in Europe.
But there is no other option.
About the Author: Dr. Robert Kelly, Pusan National University
Dr. Robert E. Kelly is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at Pusan National University in South Korea. His research interests focus on Security in Northeast Asia, U.S. foreign policy, and international financial institutions. He has written for outlets including Foreign Affairs, the European Journal of International Relations, and the Economist, and he has spoken on television news services including BBC and CCTV. His personal website/blog is here; his Twitter page is here.
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waco
August 19, 2025 at 11:21 am
Trump, ever the true or real art-of-the-deal conman, is often wishy washy. Sometimes, or at times, seemingly ready to play a quick game of russian roulette.
Thus russia must reject the notion of an assurance based on article 5, as aggression is always and always a two-way street.
Especially when nazis are at the forefront of the scene.
The nazis must WITHDRAW from Donbass, and also from parts of sumy region and kharkiv region in order to allow a somewhat straight line to be physically drawn nearly in parallel to the Dnieper.
That would still leave the river largely in the possession of the fascists, but yet would allow full and clear separation of all ground troops.
The gist is – nobody can be trusted, not even trump himself.
The only thing that can be trusted is a physical barrier.
Which can be 24/7 patrolled by third world peacekeepers.