Russia Wants ‘Security Guarantees’ Too. Here’s What They Look Like.

 

 

“What Mr. Putin says are Russia’s rightful national security demands have been consistent for years. They reflect a list of things that he refers to in shorthand as “the root causes” of the conflict.

 

Under President Trump, Russia’s concerns are finally “being heard” in Washington, Mr. Putin says. “We can see now that some mutual understanding is taking shape,” Mr. Putin said at a summit in China this week, referring to his meeting with Mr. Trump in Alaska last month.

 

Here’s what Russian officials mean when they talk about security guarantees and how that compares with the Ukrainian position.

 

NATO’s growth is a longtime Kremlin worry.

 

Russia’s most oft-cited demand for ending the conflict is a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO. The alliance declared in 2008 that Ukraine would eventually become a member and has repeated the vow regularly since then.

 

The eastward expansion of the U.S.-led military alliance after the collapse of the Soviet Union has shaped Mr. Putin’s worldview more than any other trend, his statements suggest.

 

For years, Mr. Putin has repeatedly stated a common Russian belief that when NATO admitted former Soviet republics and satellites into the alliance in the 1990s and early 2000s, the United States broke promises it had given to the last Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, that it would not do so.

 

 

Since the start of events in Ukraine in 2022, Mr. Putin has continued to frame it, among other things, as a struggle against NATO’s expansion. He said this week that Russia would accept Ukraine’s admittance into the European Union, but reiterated that it would never tolerate Ukraine inside NATO.

 

“We have always been against Ukraine becoming a member of the North Atlantic alliance,” he told journalists in China on Wednesday. “Security of one country cannot come at the expense of security of another country, in this case the Russian Federation.”

 

Workarounds on NATO expansion are tricky.

 

Mr. Trump has said that NATO will not admit Ukraine. Analysts believe that the Kremlin wants that in writing, or a change in Ukraine’s Constitution that enshrines its “neutral” status. Both NATO and Ukraine, however, have ruled out any binding limitations to their security policies.

 

Ukraine’s Western allies are working on a potential solution to the deadlock. They are discussing a deal that would substitute NATO’s mutual-defense pact with bilateral agreements that would oblige Ukraine’s allies to come to its defense. To make such a deterrent credible, France and Britain are leading efforts to create a coalition of countries that would potentially station troops in Ukraine.

 

But Russia says it categorically opposes the presence of troops from NATO countries in Ukraine. The Kremlin has also demanded to be part of any international security guarantees provided to Kyiv.

 

Efforts by officials in the United States and Europe to craft a security deal for Ukraine without considering the Kremlin’s position make them unlikely to succeed, said Samuel Charap, a Russia expert at RAND Corporation, a security research organization in Washington.

 

“In a way, it’s putting the cart before the horse,” he said. “If either side presents the other with security guarantees as a fait accompli, it is unlikely to lead to a negotiated outcome.”

 

Russia wants a smaller Ukrainian Army.

 

Another major disagreement in the peace talks relates to Ukraine’s postwar military potential. Ukraine is rapidly developing its domestic weapons industry and pursuing a multibillion-dollar arms buildup. The Ukrainian government hopes these policies will allow the country to defend itself even if international security guarantees do not materialize.

 

Kyiv’s aggressive rearmament program, however, goes squarely against what Russia sees as its security interests.

 

One of Russia’s conditions, which was stated in low-level peace talks in Istanbul in June, is a cap on the size of the Ukrainian military and limits on the amount and types of weapons it has. Russia has framed this demand as a guarantee that the Ukrainian military would be unable to conduct offensive operations.” [1]

 

It seems that by not considering Russia’s security concerns, Starmer, Merz and Macron, living comfortably in the Western government compounds, are positioning themselves for a fight till last Ukrainian. Obviously, this does not look good in most eyes, including America’s president Trump’s. Most likely, he will blame them for the failure of diplomacy.

 

Since Zelensky's government doesn't have the money to pay for their wishes, they can't commission music. Therefore, their wishes are of no interest to anyone. 

 

1. Russia Wants ‘Security Guarantees’ Too. Here’s What They Look Like. Kurmanaev, Anatoly.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Sep 4, 2025.