Umland: Why Security Guarantees for Ukraine Are Important but Secondary

At the beginning of 2025, influenced by the efforts of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which aimed to broker a peace deal in Ukraine, France and Great Britain initiated discussions regarding security guarantees for Ukraine within the framework of the 'Coalition of the Willing.' This marked a significant step in attempts to engage European countries in the peace process, demonstrating their serious commitment to investing in regional stability and their desire to be part of the negotiations.

A key issue in these discussions has been how to construct a future ceasefire between the Russian Federation and Ukraine to prevent a renewed Russian attack on Ukraine in the coming years. How can past mistakes be avoided in the future? These discussions have proved to be a valuable exercise, as they have articulated some preliminary conditions for a stable future peace.

International negotiations regarding security guarantees have compelled civilian and military officials in Western capitals to seriously envision and plan their countries' future involvement in the affairs of Ukraine, around it, and on its territory. However, despite this, there are four main shortcomings inherent in these discussions.

Firstly, discussions and negotiations regarding security guarantees for Ukraine, at least for now, have not contributed to the cessation of the war. Various specific proposals, such as the establishment of 'assurance forces' or the integration of NATO's eastern flank air defense systems with Ukraine's systems, have elicited positive responses in Kyiv. However, the repercussions for Moscow from the disclosure of Western plans to assist Ukraine in ensuring its security remain negative.

Paradoxically, the search for a stable ceasefire has made the end of hostilities even more distant. Proposals from Great Britain and France, particularly regarding the deployment of 'Coalition of the Willing' troops in western Ukraine, have raised the stakes and heightened the Kremlin's wariness about the developments following the war. This has diminished Russia's already low willingness to seek a compromise, as such statements have lowered the Kremlin's motivation to cease hostilities before it gains a clear advantage on the battlefield.

The Russian Federation has categorically rejected the idea of foreign troops' presence in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated in March 2025: 'The presence of NATO troops under any flag on Ukrainian territory poses the same threat as Ukraine's accession to NATO. We do not accept this under any circumstances.'

Secondly, plans for ensuring Ukraine's future security have limited practical significance. The widely discussed security guarantees represent a set of intentions, scenarios, and promises that, if implemented, would partially strengthen Ukraine's security through symbolic troop presence, airspace patrolling, and so forth. However, Western plans do not foresee any substantial improvement in either Ukraine's international integration or its defense capabilities.

Official negotiations focus on the creation, conditions, formulation, and ratification of specific future multilateral mechanisms for responding to potential new escalations from Moscow. The idea of security guarantees for Ukraine, while noble in essence, offers Kyiv only the prospect of trusting a certain algorithm of limited-scale future actions from the West. It also optimistically assumes that Moscow will believe that the proposed response algorithm will be consistently applied when needed.

However, the currently envisaged security guarantees lack any organizational structure, such as NATO, to support them. They also do not discuss a militarily significant presence of Western troops deployed along the future line of contact between Russia and Ukraine. Without serious institutional and sufficient material support for the guarantees, neither Kyiv nor Moscow can take the security guarantees for Ukraine seriously.

Ukraine may be forced to follow the 'principle of hope' and accept the security guarantees it can obtain rather than those it needs. In such a case, any future ceasefire could merely be a pause before a resumption of large-scale hostilities. This would serve as a break in the war in favor of Russia, as it would allow Moscow to choose a convenient moment for new escalation, for example, amid parallel military escalation in the South China Sea or other regions.

Conversely, the Ukrainian leadership, hoping that at least some of the promises made under the security agreement will be fulfilled, will be doomed to future military passivity and unpleasant surprises. In a sense, such a scenario would repeat Ukraine's experience since 2014, related to the infamous 'Memorandum on Security Guarantees' of 1994.

Kyiv signed the Budapest Memorandum, although in 1993 there was a Ukrainian request and a draft for a full-fledged treaty between Ukraine and the 'Big Five.' This treaty would have obligated each permanent member of the UN Security Council to take 'necessary measures' if any nuclear-armed state made 'threats or used force or threatened to use it in any form against the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine.' Thirdly, the current discussion remains theoretical in the sense that it cannot foresee the specific situation on the front where security guarantees will ultimately be provided to Ukraine.

The precise nature and conditions under which high-intensity hostilities will cease will determine the character and durability of the future ceasefire. The situation on the battlefield and the socio-economic condition of both countries at the moment when the guns fall silent will largely dictate the stability and duration of the ceasefire. The content and wording of future security guarantees will undoubtedly also play a role.