Putin’s reported terms involve Ukraine giving up the 25 per cent of the eastern region of Donetsk that it still holds. The battle lines in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would also be turned into a new border, and Russia would keep the territory it occupies in both.
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In return, the Russian leader has reportedly committed to pulling his troops out of the small areas of territory that Russia holds in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.
While it has not been spelled out, most analysts believe Putin also seeks formal recognition of Moscow’s claim to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014 after a disputed referendum on joining Russia.
Ukraine’s position is that Crimea is part of Ukraine but privately, some Ukrainian officials admit that it would be extremely difficult to take it back by force.
As the White House talks wrapped up on Monday, Zelensky told reporters that the territorial disputes would be left for him and Putin to determine at their meeting – which Trump wants to take place by the end of August, according to Axios.
Cadets undergo training with American Colt M16A4 assault rifles at the Taras Shevchenko Military Institute in Kyiv region, Ukraine.Credit: Bloomberg
What are the options for security guarantees?
Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said European leaders would press Trump on “what extent” he would back security guarantees for Ukraine.
So far, Trump has stopped short of offering US boots on the ground and has said that Europe is the “first line of defence”, adding, however, that Washington would “be involved”.
Macron has said Ukraine requires an army capable of “resisting and even containing any Russian aggression” of “several hundred thousand people, which we will have to equip, train and maintain for a long time”.
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Putin, for his part, wants to see limits imposed on the size of the Ukrainian armed forces, and an agreement that Ukraine will remain neutral.
Macron has suggested any forces sent under the “coalition of the willing” would have to prevent potential incursions into Ukrainian territory. They “will not be deployed in hot zones” and will not perform peacekeeping functions, but will demonstrate “strategic support”, he said.
According to the French leader, the Americans have demonstrated a willingness to work with this “coalition of the willing”, but military analysts say the details matter.
A major peacekeeping force backing up the Ukrainian military would require tens of thousands of troops to be a credible deterrent against future Russian aggression, according to The New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger.
“A second possibility is a “tripwire” force – one far smaller. It would not be able to mount much of a defence, but the theory is that the Russians would hesitate to risk killing non-Ukrainian Europeans in any resumed invasion effort,” Sanger notes.
Another, mostly symbolic, option could be an even smaller “observer force”, though it would have almost no effective combat role in a future war.
Whatever the final agreement, Ukraine already appears set for a major spending splurge, with the Financial Times citing a document seen by the paper as showing Kyiv lined up to buy $US100 billion ($154 billion) of American weapons financed by Europe under the terms of any security guarantees.
What about NATO?
Putin is also thought to want a legally binding pledge that NATO will not expand eastwards, sources told Reuters earlier this year. The expansion of NATO following the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a major sore point for the Russian leader over the years.
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On Monday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said NATO membership for Ukraine was not under discussion, but that Kyiv could receive “Article 5” type security guarantees – a reference to the part of the organisation’s constitution that provides mutual defence.
Article 5 enshrines the principle of collective defence, in which an attack on any of NATO’s 32 members is considered an attack on all. Kyiv has long aspired to join the alliance and has enshrined it as a strategic objective in Ukraine’s constitution.
with Reuters and Bloomberg
