The question Ukraine should ask about any American security guarantee is brutally practical: when Russian missiles hit Kyiv, who in Washington has to do what, and what happens if they refuse? Charles de Gaulle understood the problem, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy now has to ask its Ukrainian version about Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Lviv.
The de Gaulle lesson
France built its own nuclear deterrent because de Gaulle wanted a capability Paris could control. In 1966, roughly five years after his exchanges with John F. Kennedy, he withdrew France from NATO's integrated military command. France remained a NATO member and retained its commitment to collective defence. That distinction is the whole point. De Gaulle did not discard allies. He reduced the number of decisions on which French survival depended entirely on an ally.
His distrust also came from wartime dealings with Washington. American assistance to France was shaped by American financial and political interests, including disputes over French reserves and control over colonial economies. Lend-lease was a wartime policy, not a charitable donation. The account that Washington sought arrangements costing Paris all its gold reserves and economic control over its colonies deserves care rather than repetition as a settled transaction. The durable lesson needs no exaggerated history: indispensable help can come with demands that weaken the recipient's future position.
A signed document matters only if its obligations can survive a president who decides the price of carrying them out is too high.
Ukraine needs American help. That fact gives Kyiv a reason to negotiate hard, not a reason to suspend judgment. The president who signs a guarantee will not necessarily be the president asked to implement it. Even the same administration can describe an obligation one way at the signing ceremony and another way when soldiers, aircraft or sanctions must actually be committed.
The NATO distinction
Ukraine's pursuit of NATO membership remains rational. An alliance brings shared planning, military interoperability, established procedures and obligations distributed across multiple governments. Article 5 does not automatically dispatch a predetermined force; each member decides what action it considers necessary. Still, an alliance with standing institutions is a stronger basis for defence than a bespoke assurance improvised during talks with the aggressor.
A separate US guarantee needs equally serious questions attached to every promise. What triggers a response? Who determines whether the trigger has been met? Is the response specified, or left to a later political decision? Can support be interrupted while officials argue over whether Russia's latest attack counts? Ukraine has already lived through the gap between language that sounds protective and language that requires someone to fight.
The Budapest Memorandum is part of that experience. Russia pledged to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, then violated both. The United States and Britain did not undertake an obligation under that memorandum to fight Russia. Future agreements must therefore be judged by their operative terms, not by the reassurance surrounding them. A Ukrainian family under attack cannot take cover beneath a grand description of a narrow clause.
Dependence in real time
The reported failures affecting alerts and services described as Starshield have made the trust question immediate. Explanations calling the disruptions accidental, delivered amid pressure from the White House, are unlikely to satisfy Ukrainians whose warning systems and communications matter in wartime. The essential response is operational: identify what failed, who controls restoration, how continuity is protected and which fallback works if the primary system goes down again.
That question does not require pretending a technical outage proves a political order. It requires recognizing how much power an essential dependency holds. A service can be interrupted by failure, policy or a contract decision. For the people depending on it, the first requirement is an alternative they can use. The same logic applies to intelligence links and other capabilities Ukraine still receives from the United States.
This is where a guarantee meets the actual war. If Ukraine must accept limits on its defensive options while another government controls critical systems, the imbalance grows. Zelenskyy can value American support and still demand technical redundancy, European alternatives and clear rules for continuity. An administration that expects trust should welcome arrangements that make its promises resilient. Ukrainians have paid enough for assurances whose practical terms emerge only during a crisis.
Pressure that creates time
Russia's ability to attack again depends on money, production and replacement capacity. Strikes on the infrastructure sustaining its war economy impose direct costs. Stronger financial and trade sanctions make revenue and procurement harder to secure. These instruments reinforce each other when partners close evasion routes instead of easing pressure and asking Ukraine to spare facilities that help fund the invasion.
The proposed 10 to 15 years is a strategic window to pursue, not a recovery schedule anyone can guarantee. Deep damage to the Kremlin's economy could give Ukraine and Europe time to build strength before Moscow can mount another major attack. Continued energy income, sanctions relief or access to imported components could shorten that window. Every proposal to relax economic pressure has to be measured against the rearmament it might finance.
Washington can demonstrate the value of its assurances right now through concrete actions:
- Maintain pressure on Kremlin revenue.
- Strengthen enforcement.
- Stop pressing Kyiv to restrict strikes on targets that sustain Russia's war effort.
- Deal seriously with Iran's military support for Moscow.
These are actions whose effects Ukraine can assess before anyone asks it to trade present influence for a future promise.
What Ukraine does with the window
Time helps only if Ukraine and its partners use it. EU integration would connect Ukraine more deeply to Europe's market and institutions. Reform and growth would expand the tax base funding defence. A smaller economic gap with Russia would improve Ukraine's ability to sustain a long competition, even though economic convergence cannot be ordered into existence by a security agreement.
European defence needs the same urgency. Ukraine's drone development, production capacity and battlefield experience belong inside a genuinely integrated European security space, alongside procurement plans and industrial investment. Kyiv should help initiate that work with partners willing to commit resources. A promise to defend Ukraine years from now has less value if Europe fails to build the means to do so while Ukraine is fighting today.
Geography sharpens the incentives. An American administration can imagine a bargain with Moscow from across an ocean. Ukraine and its European partners live with the consequences of Russian rearmament next door. Ordinary Americans remain our friends, including those who have helped us. It means Kyiv cannot assume every White House shares Europe's sense of urgency. Europe's security becomes more credible when its capabilities reflect the danger it faces, with a strong Ukraine at the center.
Why the guarantee appears now
The timing of renewed guarantee talk matters. A promise keeps Kyiv in negotiations with Russia and gives the White House a peace process to present before the US midterms. Those elections could change the balance in Congress and the appetite for hearings into administration decisions. Officials who expect scrutiny have an incentive to show a diplomatic initiative and reduce public pressure. That incentive says little about whether they intend to enforce the eventual document.
Accepting a promise as progress before its terms exist carries risk. Negotiations can continue while pressure on Russia weakens. Each trip to Moscow can be presented as a necessary step toward peace. Ukraine is then asked to spend political capital defending a process whose tangible results accrue elsewhere. The administration gets time; the Kremlin may get relief; Kyiv is told to wait for the guarantee.
Zelenskyy has to engage the United States because American capabilities remain important to Ukraine's defence. Engagement does not require treating the White House's preferred negotiation track as inherently useful. The test is concrete movement: tighter pressure on Russia, stronger Ukrainian capabilities and terms that assign real duties to their signatories. If those are absent, another announcement about future guarantees changes little at the front.
Witkoff, Kushner and access to Europe
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner gain something valuable when their travel between European capitals and the Kremlin is understood as mediation on Ukraine's behalf. Access gives them an opportunity to shape what European governments consider negotiable, including sanctions and commercial arrangements involving Russia. Ukraine should judge that role by the proposals they advance and by what Moscow would receive if those proposals were accepted.
The dispute over sanctions affecting Alisher Usmanov shows why the European track matters. Measures against people and assets linked to Russia's power structure can become a source of influence in rooms far from Ukraine's battlefield. A concession made there would affect the pressure Kyiv relies on here. European leaders who want to help Ukraine should demand to know exactly which restrictions anyone proposes to remove, and for whose benefit.
There are grave allegations that Kremlin-linked multibillion-dollar asset opportunities involving circles around Witkoff and Kushner create conflicts of interest and potential influence over them. Political corruption and kompromat are serious charges. They call for scrutiny of ownership, payments, communications and the terms of any proposed deals. Ukraine can set a boundary in a speech by making clear that anyone seeking to broker its security should face rigorous examination of interests that may profit from concessions to Moscow.
Make the European argument in public
Kyiv should challenge mediation that erodes its position, openly and with specifics. If Witkoff or Kushner advocates easing sanctions, identify the Russian revenue stream that benefits. If either presses Ukraine to stop strikes on facilities sustaining the invasion, explain the military price. If irreversible concessions are requested today in exchange for guarantees to be defined later, put that sequence in front of European governments and voters.
That approach can make damaging proposals politically toxic without asking Europeans to accept a slogan in place of evidence. Many European politicians will hesitate to confront White House envoys directly. Ukraine has a stronger reason to speak plainly. European media, experts and legislators can scrutinize the terms once those terms are visible. The aim is to protect a European defence effort from being traded away through separate energy or security bargains with Moscow.
Zelenskyy should keep seeking American commitments and hold their authors to exact language. At the same time, Ukraine must preserve its ability to strike Russia's war economy, push for stronger sanctions and build the European capacity that makes any future promise easier to fulfill. The dangerous sequence runs the other way: weaken pressure, restrict Ukraine, grant access to brokers offering Moscow relief, then receive a document in compensation. By the time that document is tested, the power used to obtain it will already be gone.
