U.S officials say Washington has agreed to give Ukraine security guarantees in peace talks

BERLIN (AP) — The U.S. has agreed to provide unspecified security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a peace deal to end Russia’s nearly four-year war, and more talks are likely this weekend, U.S. officials said Monday following the latest discussions with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin.

The officials said talks with President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, led to narrowing differences on security guarantees that Kyiv said must be provided, as well as Moscow’s demand that Ukraine concede land in the Donbas region in the country’s east.

Trump was expected to dial into a dinner Monday evening with negotiators and European leaders, and more talks are likely this weekend in Miami or elsewhere in the United States, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly by the White House.

The U.S. officials said the offer of security guarantees won’t be on the table “forever.” They said the Trump administration plans to put forward the agreement on security guarantees for Senate approval, although they didn’t specify whether it would be ratified like a treaty, which needs the chamber’s two-thirds approval.

The U.S. officials also said there is consensus on about 90% of the U.S.-authored peace plan, and that Russia has indicated it is open to Ukraine joining the European Union, something it previously said it did not object to.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the Ukrainians, Americans and Europeans agree that “a ceasefire should be secured by substantial legal and material security guarantees from the U.S. and Europe,” calling it a “truly far-reaching, substantial agreement that we did not have before, namely that both Europe and the U.S. are jointly prepared to do this.”

Questions over Ukraine’s postwar security and the fate of occupied territories have been the main obstacles in talks. Zelenskyy has emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress.

Zelenskyy on Monday called talks “substantial” and noted that differences remain on the issue of territories.

Zelenskyy has expressed readiness to drop Ukraine’s bid to join the NATO military alliance if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine’s preference remains NATO membership as the best security guarantee to prevent further Russian aggression.

Ukraine has continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of Donetsk region still under its control as a key condition for peace.

The Russian president has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.

Asked whether the negotiations could be over by Christmas, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal was a “thankless task.”

“I can only speak for the Russian side, for President Putin,” Peskov said. “He is open to peace, to a serious peace and serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time.”

Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.

Drone strikes continue

Russia fired 153 drones of various types at Ukraine overnight Sunday into Monday, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said 133 drones were neutralized, while 17 more hit their targets.

In Russia, the Defense Ministry on Monday said forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones overnight. An additional 16 drones were destroyed between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time.

Eighteen drones were shot down over Moscow itself, the defense ministry said. Flights were temporarily halted at the city’s Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports as part of safety measures, officials said.

Damage details and casualty figures were not immediately available.

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Madhani reported from Washington. Seung Min Kim in Washington, Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin, Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

Stefanie Dazio And Aamer Madhani, The Associated Press