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Michael Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
U.S. President Donald Trump is determined to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, which has cost hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian lives and billions of dollars in Western aid to Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor three years ago.
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To that end, he has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the White House on Friday to sign a minerals deal that Trump hailed as “a very big agreement.”
Trump has long believed that Ukraine and our European allies are freeloaders that have exploited the largesse of his predecessors and entangled the United States in an ill-advised war of choice. He wants Europe to underwrite its own security, not to mention Ukraine’s. In order for Europe and Ukraine to earn seats at the table, he has suggested, they will have to pay up — with Europe spending more on defense and Ukraine paying back American aid it previously received.
On Feb. 18, Trump asserted that Ukraine “should have never started” the war and “could have made a deal.” The next day, Trump went so far as to call Zelenskyy a “dictator” — a label he has not applied to Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 25 years.
Trump’s disparate treatment of Zelenskyy and Putin is realpolitik in the raw. Ukraine is in the weakest position of all parties to the conflict, and Trump may exploit this asymmetry by negotiating against Zelenskyy as much as he negotiates against Putin. For Trump, a swift end to the war is more important than the terms of the peace. That ethos does not bode well for Kyiv.
Beyond a cessation of hostilities, Trump wants to recoup the United States’ investment in Ukraine. Trump has complained that Zelenskyy “talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn’t be won.” (Trump’s claim overstates total U.S. aid by over $100 billion.) Hence the Trump administration’s recent proposal to acquire half of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, estimated by some analysts to be worth as much as $11.5 trillion, in return for support promised by the Biden administration.
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In all his dealings, Trump seeks leverage. These negotiations are no exception.
Trump will lean hard on the Ukrainians to accede to some of Putin’s terms. Yet he needs to secure concessions from the Russian side, too. That’s because accepting Moscow’s maximalist war aims would deal a crippling blow to his reputation as a shrewd statesman. Nobel Peace Prizes are not awarded for capitulation.
Acquiescence would also undermine Trump’s grand strategy to reduce the U.S. military presence in Europe. An emboldened Putin would be sure to stir trouble along NATO’s eastern flank and make it more difficult for Trump to execute on his “America First” foreign policy by withdrawing U.S. troops from Europe.
To extract meaningful concessions, Trump will have to convince Putin that time is not on his side. He could do so by supplying Ukraine with more lethal military aid, tightening sanctions on Russia and pledging long-term support for a sovereign Ukraine — while dangling the prospect of normalized U.S.-Russian relations.
So far, however, Trump’s envoys have emphasized only the fruits of potential U.S.-Russian amity. This approach is not enough to induce the necessary concessions.
To secure peace through strength, it would be in Trump’s interest to work in tandem with our European partners, who will bear the burden of Ukraine’s financial and economic survival. It would be a mistake for a ceasefire deal to come at the cost of the transatlantic alliance.
As for a ceasefire itself, allowing Russia to retain de facto control of seized Ukrainian territory has always been a part of the expected dealmaking. The bigger, unresolved issue is what sort of security guarantees Ukraine will get once the fighting stops.
Can Ukraine be part of NATO? That seems unlikely for now. But if Ukraine can’t be in NATO, can NATO be in Ukraine?
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told European allies this month that a “durable peace” requires that “any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.” But he stipulated that these troops be part of a non-NATO mission and not be covered by NATO’s collective defense agreement, known as Article 5. He ruled out any U.S. troop presence in Ukraine, though Vice President JD Vance later said that “everything is on the table.”
An alternative to NATO membership for Ukraine might be a multi-layered defense system following a ceasefire. This configuration — proposed by Paul Stares, my colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations, and his co-author, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution — could include a secure outer defense perimeter, a rapid response force, and bolstered security around Ukraine’s population centers and critical infrastructure. Maintaining a multi-layered defense system to credibly deter another Russian invasion could require annual defense spending of some $20 billion to $40 billion a year. That’s a lot, but it’s not out of the question.
With near-term NATO membership off the table, Ukraine’s best bet is probably a security guarantee backed by European boots on the ground. Europe would need to muster at least 20,000 troops, coupled with crucial logistics and intelligence support from the United States, to establish a credible deterrent.
Ukraine also needs a great deal of foreign investment to rebuild its economy and achieve prosperity. Therein lies an opportunity for the United States. As Trump recognizes, Ukraine is rich in critical minerals and rare earth elements that America needs, although some of them are in or near the country’s Russian-occupied east. As my colleague Heidi Crebo-Rediker has argued, the United States must have access to such resources — and deny China and Russia access to them. That would give the United States a stake in Ukraine’s ongoing security, viability and prosperity.
If Trump accepts anything short of a deal that ensures a sovereign, secure Ukraine, the country risks becoming a failed state. There are already echoes of Trump’s approach to Afghanistan in his first term. Eager to end America’s longest war, his administration negotiated a 2020 peace agreement with the Taliban in Doha, but excluded Afghanistan’s government from the talks. The deal prioritized a swift end to the war, with a near-term deadline for U.S. withdrawal. The Biden administration abided by the deal and we saw the result: The Taliban stormed back to power and rolled back 20 years of progress for women, education, health care and the economy.
Trump is right to try to end the Ukraine war, but a hastily negotiated deal at the expense of our allies and partners would be a grave error. It would embolden our adversaries, fracture the transatlantic alliance, make it more difficult to pivot to Asia and be a failure that undercuts Trump’s desire to be seen as the ultimate peacemaker.
If you thought the optics of the Taliban parading American Humvees through Kabul looked bad, imagine the Russians driving a convoy of Abrams tanks through Kharkiv.