Steve Witkoff, U.S. special envoy: Russia has agreed to NATO-like protections for Ukraine in talks

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with President Trump to NATO-like security guarantees that could help move peace negotiations along with Ukraine.

Mr. Witkoff said the Alaska meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin yielded “epic” concessions from Russia on the security front.

“It means the United States is potentially prepared to be able to provide Article 5 security guarantees, but not from NATO, directly from the United States and other European countries,” Mr. Witkoff said on “Fox News Sunday.” That is big, really big.”

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mr. Witkoff said that sort of security is “one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO.” He said Mr. Putin had not previously agreed to such a setup.

European Union President Ursula von der Leyen said in Brussels that European leaders “welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article-5-like security guarantees for Ukraine, and the coalition of the willingness, including the European Union, is ready to do its share.”

Article 5 of the NATO charter requires members to come to aid of any member that is attacked.

Mr. Witkoff also said that Mr. Putin agreed to “enshrining legislatively language that would attest to not attempting to take any more land from Ukraine after a peace deal” and “they would attest to not violating European borders.”

That possible point of agreement is expected to be fleshed out further when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders travel to the White House on Monday for more talks.

Mr. Zelensky said the devil is in the details.

“It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine and we are very thankful to the United States and to the president for such [a] signal,” Mr. Zelensky said, “This is a significant change, but there are no details how it will work, and what America’s role will be, what Europe’s role will be and what the EU can do, and this is our main task, we need security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO, and we consider EU accession to be part of the security guarantees.”

Mr. Trump faced stiff criticism from Democrats and some of his allies after he backed off his pre-meeting warning that Russia would face “severe consequences” if Mr. Putin did not support a ceasefire.

However, Mr. Witkoff said Sunday the president switched gears after Russia’s embrace of the “more robust” security concessions.

Mr. Witkoff also sidestepped reports that Mr. Trump supports Mr. Putin’s insistence that Russia retains control of the Donbas region of Ukraine, where more than 6 million Ukrainians lived before the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.