NATO seeks to position Kyiv for truce talks with arms plan shift

Ukraine’s allies have shifted their focus from seeking a victory to trying to put President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the best position to counter Russian advances or negotiate a possible cease-fire, people familiar with the matter said.

For now, that means NATO is redoubling efforts to rush more weapons to the war-torn country as Kyiv forces are slowly losing ground, raising the specter the eventual truce may freeze the conflict with swathes of Ukraine under occupation by Vladimir Putin’s troops.

Putin has shown no willingness to discuss a cease-fire, but the return of Donald Trump to the White House has focused NATO allies on how to shore up the political will to sustain the nearly three-year war as morale starts to fade.

As foreign ministers gathered in Brussels this week have focused on how to supply more weapons, governments have begun considering various negotiated scenarios to end the war, the people said.

The discussion includes the kind of security guarantees that would protect Ukraine, while not provoking Putin, the people said. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity given the political and security sensitivity of the planning, which is private and still incomplete.

One possible option for a cease-fire includes creating a demilitarized zone. In case of a cease-fire, European troops would probably secure and patrol it, according to one senior NATO diplomat.

Those discussions come amid recognition that the situation in Ukraine is unsustainable and negotiations should begin soon, according to another senior western diplomat. For European allies, the scenarios also offer an opportunity to show Trump they can stay relevant if cease-fire talks eventually crystallize.

The private considerations over how the war may end took place as NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, tried on Wednesday to keep the focus on surging weapons to Ukraine, setting aside for now the contours of any cease-fire.

“We must do more than just keep Ukraine in the fight,” Rutte said in his closing remarks at the NATO meeting. “We must provide enough support to change the trajectory of this war once and for all.”

“Changing the trajectory means that where the frontline is now moving westwards we have to make sure that Ukraine is in a position of strength” when it comes to potential talks, he added.

Zelenskyy signaled in recent interviews that a diplomatic solution is needed and that he’d accept an end to hostilities with parts of eastern Ukraine occupied, an outcome recent polls have shown a majority of Ukrainians would tolerate.

“Zelenskyy’s acknowledgment that Ukraine won’t be able to liberate all Russian-occupied territory militarily is more than a recognition of reality,” said Lucian Kim, International Crisis Group analyst and author of recently published “Putin’s Revenge: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine.” “It is also an opening to future peace efforts by a second Trump administration.”

The key for Zelenskyy – and the complication for NATO – is his request that the alliance provide security guarantees over the portions of the country that Kyiv still controls, as well as the uncertain possibility of regaining that territory later through diplomacy.

The Ukrainian president said Sunday that any invitation to join the alliance must apply to his entire country, within its internationally recognized borders. His country’s previous experience with security guarantees, provided jointly by Russia, the U.S. and Britain by the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 in return for Kyiv giving up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, proved worthless when Putin invaded.

Membership for Ukraine in NATO – with its security guarantee that a war against one is a war against all – is out of the question in the short term. It would also be a red line for Putin, who sees NATO on Russia’s border as a threat and Ukraine ultimately a part of his sphere of influence.

Instead, Kyiv would need security guarantees that potentially bind the U.S. or other allies to come to its defense if Russia were to breach any cease-fire.

Those would go beyond the commitments by the U.S. and dozens of allies to bolster Ukraine’s military over the long term, including with training.

One goal of bulking up Kyiv’s military, and allowing it to strike deeper into Russia with western weapons, is to convince Putin that talks are better than fighting, which now is unlikely with Russian forces continuing to advance.

“We don’t want to sugarcoat anything,” General Christian Freuding, head of the German Defense Ministry’s planning and command staff, said in comments posted online. Russia is taking the initiative “on all fronts, in all areas” and making continuous territorial gains. That includes on the eastern transport hub of Pokrovsk, which he sees Ukrainian forces needing to abandon by early next year.

According to a NATO senior official, the pace of Russia’s advances is increasing, putting Ukrainian frontlines under additional pressure. And while Russia is sustaining casualties of about 1,500 killed and wounded a day, they have also been able to recruit around 30,000 new personnel a month, cementing the country’s manpower advantage.

“Putin is clearly in the lead and doesn’t particularly want any negotiations,” Estonia’s ambassador to NATO, Juri Luik, said in an interview with the nation’s public broadcaster ERR.

Worries within the administration of outgoing President Joe Biden that a Russian victory would embolden Moscow allies China, Iran and North Korea are at least partly behind the renewed surge of artillery shells, missiles, land mines and air defense systems.

NATO’s Rutte said in an interview with the Financial Times this week that he delivered a similar warning to Trump about America’s rivals when he visited the president-elect recently in Florida.

Even without a shift to Trump, who has criticized the billions the U.S. has pledged to support Ukraine, dwindling manpower and weapons mean talks would need to begin next year anyway, according to Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at Rand.

“Ukraine lacks the manpower to stop the Russian offensive, and the west has little left to give in terms of existing stocks of weapons,” Charap said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Brussels this week, planning to discuss how to protect Ukraine over the long term, despite his short time left.

“You’ve got me, you’ve got us,” Blinken told Rutte before their meeting. “Until the 20th of January,” he added, referring to Biden’s last day in office.