Putin agreed to let US and Europe protect Ukraine, official says
Witkoff, who had joined Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the talks Friday at a military base in Alaska, offered few details on how such an agreement would work. But it appeared to be a major shift for Putin and could serve as a workaround to his long-standing objection to Ukraine's potential NATO membership.
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Outlining some of the details about the private discussions, Witkoff also said Russia had agreed to enact a law that it would not 'go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty. And there was plenty more.'
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference in Brussels with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, applauded the move. 'We welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine and the 'Coalition of the willing' -- including the European Union -- is ready to do its share,' she said.
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Zelensky thanked the United States for recent signals that Washington was willing to support such guarantees, but that much was unclear.
'It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine,' he said, 'But there are no details how it will work, and what America's role will be, 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,' he said.
Witkoff defended Trump's decision to abandon his push that Russian agree to an immediate ceasefire, which Trump had set as a benchmark going into the meeting. Witkoff said the Republican president had pivoted toward a peace deal because so much progress was made.
'We covered almost all the other issues necessary for a peace deal,' Witkoff said, without elaborating. 'We began to see some moderation in the way they're thinking about getting to a final peace deal.'
Rubio, who appeared on three Sunday news shows, said there was not going to be any kind of truce reached because Ukraine was not at the summit.
'Now, ultimately, if there isn't a peace agreement, if there isn't an end of this war, the president's been clear, there are going to be consequences,' Rubio said on ABC's 'This Week.' 'But we're trying to avoid that.'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Friday summit.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
Rubio, who is also Trump's national security adviser, said he did not believe imposing new U.S. sanctions on Russia would force Putin to accept a ceasefire.
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'The minute you issue new sanctions, your ability to get them to the table, our ability to get them to table will be severely diminished,' Rubio told NBC's 'Meet the Press.'
He also said 'we're not at the precipice of a peace agreement' and that getting there would not be easy and would take a lot of work.
'We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement, but there remains some big areas of disagreement. So we're still a long ways off,' Rubio said.
French President Emmanuel Macron was in a video conference with European Commission Ursula van der Leyen and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, Aug. 17.
Philippe Magoni/Associated Press
Zelensky and Europeans leaders, who heard from Trump after the summit, are scheduled to meet with him at the White House on Monday.
'I think everybody agreed that we had made progress. Maybe not enough for a peace deal, but we are on the path for the first time,' Witkoff said.
He added: 'The fundamental issue, which is some sort of land swap, which is obviously ultimately in the control of the Ukrainians -- that could not have been discussed at this meeting' with Putin. 'We intend to discuss it on Monday. Hopefully we have some clarity on it and hopefully that ends up in a peace deal very, very soon.'
Associated Press writers John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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