Putin agrees that US, Europe could offer NATO-style security guarantees to Ukraine, Trump envoy says

NEW YORK (AP) — Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his summit with President Donald Trump that the United States and its European allies could offer Ukraine a security guarantee resembling NATO’s collective defense mandate as part of an eventual deal to end the war, a U.S. official said Sunday.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who took part in the talks Friday at a military base in Alaska, said it “was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that” and called it “game-changing.”

“We were able to win the following concession: that the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO," Witkoff told CNN's “State of the Union.”

Witkoff offered few details on how such an arrangement would work. But it appeared to be a major shift for Putin and could serve as a workaround to his deep-seated objection to Ukraine’s potential NATO membership, a step that Kyiv has long sought.

It was expected to be a key topic Monday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and major European leaders meet with Trump at the White House to discuss ending the 3 1/2-year conflict.

“BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA,” Trump said Sunday on social media. “STAY TUNED!”

On Sunday night, however, Trump seemed to put the onus on Zelenskyy to agree to concessions.

“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight," he wrote. "Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!"

Article 5, the heart of the 32-member transatlantic military alliance, says an armed attack against a member nation is considered an attack against them all.

What needed to be hammered out at this week's talks were the contours of any security guarantees, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also participated in the summit. Ukraine and European allies have pushed the U.S. to provide that backstop in any peace agreement to deter future attacks by Moscow.

“How that’s constructed, what we call it, how it’s built, what guarantees are built into it that are enforceable, that’s what we’ll be talking about over the next few days with our partners," Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

It was unclear, however, whether Trump had fully committed to such a guarantee. Rubio said it would be “a huge concession."

The comments shed new light on what was discussed in Alaska. Before Sunday, U.S. officials had offered few details even as both Trump and Putin said their meeting was a success.

Witkoff also said Russia had agreed to enact a law that it would not “go after any other European countries and violate their sovereignty.”

“The Russians agreed on enshrining legislatively language that would prevent them from — or that they would attest to not attempting to take any more land from Ukraine after a peace deal, where they would attest to not violating any European borders," he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking in Brussels alongside Zelenskyy, applauded the news from the White House as a European coalition looks to set up a force to police any future peace in Ukraine.

"We welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine and the ‘coalition of the willing’ — including the European Union — is ready to do its share,” she said.

Zelenskyy thanked the U.S. for signaling that it was willing to support such guarantees but said much remained unclear.

“There are no details how it will work, and what America’s role will be, Europe’s role will be and what the EU can do — and this is our main task: We need security to work in practice like Article 5 of NATO,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the substance of security guarantees to secure any peace arrangement will be more important than whether they are given an Article 5-type label.

At the White House meeting, Macron said European leaders will ask the U.S. to back their plans to beef up Ukraine’s armed forces with more training and equipment and deploy an allied force away from the front lines.

“We’ll show this to our American colleagues, and we’ll tell them, ‘Right, we’re ready to do this and that, what are you prepared to do?’" Macron said. “That’s the security guarantee.”

Witkoff and Rubio defended Trump’s decision to abandon a push for a ceasefire, arguing that the Republican president had pivoted toward a full peace agreement because so much progress had been made at the summit.

“We covered almost all the other issues necessary for a peace deal,” Witkoff said, without elaborating. “We began to see some moderation in the way they’re thinking about getting to a final peace deal.”

Rubio, appearing on several TV news shows Sunday, said it would have been impossible to reach any truce Friday because Ukraine was not there.

“Now, ultimately, if there isn’t a peace agreement, if there isn’t an end of this war, the president’s been clear, there are going to be consequences,” Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week.” “But we’re trying to avoid that."

Rubio, who is also Trump's national security adviser, also voiced caution on the progress made.

“We’re still a long ways off," he said. “We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement. We’re not at the edge of one. But I do think progress was made towards one.”

Among the issues expected to dominate Monday’s meeting: What concessions Zelenskyy might accept on territory.

In talks with European allies after the summit, Trump said Putin reiterated that he wants the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that make up the Donbas, European officials said. It was unclear among those briefed whether Trump sees that as acceptable.

Witkoff said the Russians have made clear they want territory as determined by legal boundaries instead of the front lines where territory has been seized.

“There is an important discussion to be had with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there. And that discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday,” he said.

Zelenskyy has rejected Putin’s demands that Ukraine give up the Donbas region, which Russia has failed to take completely, as a condition for peace.

In Brussels, the Ukrainian leader said any talks involving land must be based on current front lines, suggesting he will not abandon land that Russia has not taken.

“The contact line is the best line for talking, and the Europeans support this,” he said. “The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land.”

Associated Press writers John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

In this photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025, a Russian soldier fires during a practice at a training ground on an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, right, and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participate in a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo)

President Donald Trump disembarks Air Force One as he arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Md., early Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025, from a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a working meeting to discuss the results of the Russia-US summit in Alaska at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Saturday, Aug. 16, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

White House envoy Steve Witkoff arrives before a news conference with President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump meets with Russia's President Vladimir Putin Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. At left is Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and second from right is Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week.

They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows and pulled occupants from cars. They have scuffled with protesters and shoved them to the ground.

The government says the actions are necessary to protect officers from violent attacks. The encounters in turn have riled up protesters even more, especially as videos of the incidents are shared widely on social media.

What is unfolding in Minneapolis reflects a broader shift in how the federal government is asserting its authority during protests, relying on immigration agents and investigators to perform crowd-management roles traditionally handled by local police who often have more training in public order tactics and de-escalating large crowds.

Experts warn the approach runs counter to de-escalation standards and risks turning volatile demonstrations into deadly encounters.

The confrontations come amid a major immigration enforcement surge ordered by the Trump administration in early December, which sent more than 2,000 officers from across the Department of Homeland Security into the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Many of the officers involved are typically tasked with arrests, deportations and criminal investigations, not managing volatile public demonstrations.

Tensions escalated after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent last week, an incident federal officials have defended as self-defense after they say Good weaponized her vehicle.

The killing has intensified protests and scrutiny of the federal response.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota asked a federal judge to intervene, filing a lawsuit on behalf of six residents seeking an emergency injunction to limit how federal agents operate during protests, including restrictions on the use of chemical agents, the pointing of firearms at non-threatening individuals and interference with lawful video recording.

“There’s so much about what’s happening now that is not a traditional approach to immigration apprehensions,” said former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldaña.

Saldaña, who left the post at the beginning of 2017 as President Donald Trump's first term began, said she can't speak to how the agency currently trains its officers. When she was director, she said officers received training on how to interact with people who might be observing an apprehension or filming officers, but agents rarely had to deal with crowds or protests.

“This is different. You would hope that the agency would be responsive given the evolution of what’s happening — brought on, mind you, by the aggressive approach that has been taken coming from the top,” she said.

Ian Adams, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, said the majority of crowd-management or protest training in policing happens at the local level — usually at larger police departments that have public order units.

“It’s highly unlikely that your typical ICE agent has a great deal of experience with public order tactics or control,” Adams said.

DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement that ICE officer candidates receive extensive training over eight weeks in courses that include conflict management and de-escalation. She said many of the candidates are military veterans and about 85% have previous law enforcement experience.

“All ICE candidates are subject to months of rigorous training and selection at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where they are trained in everything from de-escalation tactics to firearms to driving training. Homeland Security Investigations candidates receive more than 100 days of specialized training," she said.

Ed Maguire, a criminology professor at Arizona State University, has written extensively about crowd-management and protest- related law enforcement training. He said while he hasn't seen the current training curriculum for ICE officers, he has reviewed recent training materials for federal officers and called it “horrifying.”

Maguire said what he's seeing in Minneapolis feels like a perfect storm for bad consequences.

“You can't even say this doesn't meet best practices. That's too high a bar. These don't seem to meet generally accepted practices,” he said.

“We’re seeing routinely substandard law enforcement practices that would just never be accepted at the local level,” he added. “Then there seems to be just an absence of standard accountability practices.”

Adams noted that police department practices have "evolved to understand that the sort of 1950s and 1960s instinct to meet every protest with force, has blowback effects that actually make the disorder worse.”

He said police departments now try to open communication with organizers, set boundaries and sometimes even show deference within reason. There's an understanding that inside of a crowd, using unnecessary force can have a domino effect that might cause escalation from protesters and from officers.

Despite training for officers responding to civil unrest dramatically shifting over the last four decades, there is no nationwide standard of best practices. For example, some departments bar officers from spraying pepper spray directly into the face of people exercising Constitutional speech. Others bar the use of tear gas or other chemical agents in residential neighborhoods.

Regardless of the specifics, experts recommend that departments have written policies they review regularly.

“Organizations and agencies aren’t always familiar with what their own policies are,” said Humberto Cardounel, senior director of training and technical assistance at the National Policing Institute.

“They go through it once in basic training then expect (officers) to know how to comport themselves two years later, five years later," he said. "We encourage them to understand and know their training, but also to simulate their training.”

Adams said part of the reason local officers are the best option for performing public order tasks is they have a compact with the community.

“I think at the heart of this is the challenge of calling what ICE is doing even policing,” he said.

"Police agencies have a relationship with their community that extends before and after any incidents. Officers know we will be here no matter what happens, and the community knows regardless of what happens today, these officers will be here tomorrow.”

Saldaña noted that both sides have increased their aggression.

“You cannot put yourself in front of an armed officer, you cannot put your hands on them certainly. That is impeding law enforcement actions,” she said.

“At this point, I’m getting concerned on both sides — the aggression from law enforcement and the increasingly aggressive behavior from protesters.”

Law enforcement officers at the scene of a reported shooting Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

People cover tear gas deployed by federal immigration officers outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

A man is pushed to the ground as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)

A woman covers her face from tear gas as federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)