US offers Russia NATO Article 5-style security guarantees for Ukraine

The United States has proposed that Ukraine stay out of NATO but receive security guarantees similar to Articles 4 and 5 of the alliance's treaty. An unnamed senior American official told Politico about it. According to the official, the Americans have asked Russia to agree that such guarantees be given to Ukraine by both the US and the bloc itself.

American negotiators are due to ask Russia to consider the proposal on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, where talks with Ukrainian representatives will take place. US officials mentioned a similar plan as early as late last year: a source then said the deal was based on very strong guarantees, similar to Article 5, but that they would not last forever.

Why Russia may refuse

It is still unclear how the US and its European allies could provide such guarantees to Kyiv. According to Politico, Ukraine is expected to remain outside NATO, and the negotiating parties have still not agreed on Russia's demands for new territories. The outlet also warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to reject the proposal, since it would mean a “greater militarization of countries on Russia's borders”.

Putin has repeatedly demanded that, to end the war, Ukraine give up its attempts to join NATO and substantially reduce its army. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected this, the Atlantic Council website notes.

Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty calls on member states to share intelligence and discuss courses of action if one of them faces an attack. Article 5 states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all. In NATO's entire history it has been invoked only once, after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, when allies sent combat units to the war in Afghanistan.

Guarantees that already existed

Ukraine has a bad experience with security guarantees. The country's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity were supposed to be ensured by a set of agreements known as the Budapest Memorandum. By signing it in December 1994, Kyiv gave up nuclear weapons in favor of Moscow in exchange for assurances from the US, the UK and Russia that economic and military means would not be used against Ukraine.

At the time, Ukraine had the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world: it was to hand over between 1,700 and 1,900 strategic ballistic warheads, more than two thousand tactical nuclear warheads and over 170 intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the Arms Control Association. Although Russia violated the agreement, the security guarantees that were signed were never honored.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz