Ukraine has agreed with western partners that persistent Russian violations of any future ceasefire agreement would be met by a co-ordinated military response from Europe and the US, according to people briefed on the discussions.
The proposal was discussed between Ukrainian, European and American officials on several occasions in December and January and would involve a multi-tiered response to any breaches of an agreed armistice by Russia.
Envoys from Kyiv, Moscow and Washington are set to meet again on Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi for talks aimed at ending the war.
Under the plan, three people familiar with the matter said, a Russian ceasefire violation would trigger a response within 24 hours, beginning with a diplomatic warning and any action required from the Ukrainian army to halt the infraction.
READ MORE
If hostilities continued beyond that, a second phase of intervention would be initiated using forces from the so-called coalition of the willing, which includes many EU members plus the UK, Norway, Iceland and Turkey.
[ At least 15 killed in Russian strike as Zelenskiy announces more peace talksOpens in new window ]
If the violation turned into an expanded attack, 72 hours after the initial breach, a co-ordinated military response by a western-backed force involving the US military would take effect, the officials said.
The Ukrainian, European and American officials discussed the plan in Paris in December, and talks continued between national security advisers of a coalition of the willing countries in Kyiv on January 3rd, according to a person familiar with the matter.
They said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy had also broached the subject of what the US would be willing to provide with Donald Trump during the Ukrainian leader’s visit to Mar-a-Lago in December.
The UK and France have pledged to deploy troops and weaponry to Ukraine, as part of security guarantees supported by the US to underpin a 20-point peace deal aimed at ending Russia’s almost four-year-long invasion.
A European-led “deterrence” force would provide “reassurance measures in the air, at sea and on land” after a ceasefire, with the intelligence and logistical support of the US, leaders of Kyiv’s key allies said following the Paris meeting.
How a ceasefire would be monitored and enforced will be critical to its durability. The US has offered to provide high-tech monitoring capabilities along the 1,400km front line.
Ukraine has seen Russia breach numerous ceasefires since Russian forces first invaded eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014, under the guise of a pro-Moscow separatist uprising.
The Minsk agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015, were meant to halt the fighting and set out a path to lasting peace. They were agreed by Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Kremlin-installed leaders of the two separatist regions.
But the OSCE’s monitoring mission was limited to observing ceasefire violations. Without an enforcement mandate or western security guarantees, the ceasefires repeatedly collapsed, paving the way for Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Zelenskiy said in January the security guarantees negotiated with the US and input from European partners were “100 per cent ready” and that Kyiv is “waiting for our partners to confirm the date and place when we will sign it”.
“I told the American side that this is important not only for me – it is also very important ... for people to see progress,” Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv on Thursday.
Many details of the agreement remain unclear and, crucially, the security guarantees depend on a lasting ceasefire that has yet to materialise.
Trump offered Zelenskiy security guarantees the Ukrainian president described as “Nato-like”, akin to the alliance’s Article 5 commitment, under which a new Russian attack would trigger a collective response by Kyiv’s allies. Zelenskiy said Trump proposed a 15-year guarantee, though Ukrainian officials are seeking to extend it to 50 years.
Last week, Zelenskiy said an 800,000-strong Ukrainian army backed with weapons and training was part of a security guarantees package with the US.
He wants to sign that document and a postwar “prosperity plan” to rebuild Ukraine with the US before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24th, which the president believes could give Kyiv leverage in the negotiations with Moscow and lock in Trump’s support in the long term.
The Trump administration has indicated to Ukraine that US security guarantees are contingent on Kyiv first agreeing a peace deal that would probably involve ceding the Donbas region to Russia.
Zelenskiy told reporters he did not like the idea of “a quid pro quo”. “My signal was clear: signing security guarantees is an act of goodwill,” he said.
The matter of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region has become a sticking point in negotiations, with Kyiv refusing to surrender a crucial swath of land that Russia’s army has failed to capture, and Moscow refusing to move ahead with any peace deal unless its maximalist terms are met.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that his army is defeating Ukraine on the battlefield and is prepared to continue until it achieves its goals. In recent weeks, Russian missiles and drones have pummelled Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, plunging the capital of Kyiv into darkness and knocking out heating and water to many of its nearly 4 million residents amid the harshest winter of the war.
Russia has also dismissed the security guarantees discussed by the US and Ukraine out of hand. Dmitry Medvedev, a former stand-in president for Putin, said in comments published on Monday that “these guarantees can’t be one-sided”, according to Tass. “These aren’t guarantees for Ukraine. These are guarantees for both sides: Russia and Ukraine. Otherwise the guarantees don’t work.”
Moscow has also said it will not agree to any ceasefire before a comprehensive deal to end the war is reached or accept any western troop deployments to Ukraine.
Washington has done little to press Russia to halt its war and negotiate in earnest. Instead, Ukrainian and European officials said, the US had pressed Zelenskiy and made clear to Kyiv that any security commitments from the Trump administration will depend on making painful territorial concessions that align with Russia’s demands.
Ukraine, Russia and the US held their first three-way peace talks in Abu Dhabi last month. Zelenskiy said that the “central focus of the discussions was the possible parameters for ending the war”.
He said the delegations had discussed Washington’s role in “monitoring and oversight of the process of ending the war and ensuring genuine security”. He provided no details but said that “military representatives identified a list of issues” to discuss at a future meeting.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, told local media last week that there had been some “progress” made in negotiations with the Russian side. He cited “a qualitative change in the composition of the Russian delegation” as the reason.
“These are different people, and there were no more pseudo-historical lectures,” he said, referring to previous bilateral talks in Istanbul last spring during which low-level Russian officials lectured their Ukrainian counterparts with a revisionist history lesson. In contrast, the talks in the UAE capital, he said, “were very focused”.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
