WASHINGTON DC – US President Donald Trump’s latest diplomatic push to end the war in Ukraine has been met with a blistering critique from a former top official in the Biden administration, who has dismissed the talks around “security guarantees” as “largely divorced from reality.”
In an interview with Kyiv Post on Monday, Ambassador Michael Carpenter, who served as Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council until early this year, warned that the elaborate discussions were a theatrical display, or a “kabuki force,” that would ultimately fail to provide Ukraine with the protection it needs.
Carpenter’s comments come after a week of high-stakes meetings, including Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and a subsequent gathering at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders.
While the administration has touted progress, announcing that Trump has tasked Secretary of State Marco Rubio with negotiating a peace deal, Carpenter sees a dangerous gap between rhetoric and reality.
A “Kabuki” guarantee
According to Carpenter, the proposed European-led “reassurance force” of 15,000 to 20,000 troops is a non-starter.
“The concept of a reassurance force implicitly assumes a ceasefire will be imposed on Russia like some sort of deus ex machina,” he told Kyiv Post. “In reality this force probably isn’t ever going to deploy because Putin will surely reject it when negotiating the terms of a ceasefire.”
He was particularly critical of European leaders who assert that Putin doesn’t get a vote.
“Actually he does because a ceasefire won’t happen without his acquiescence,” Carpenter said.
He explained that without a willingness to deploy the force before a ceasefire or seize frozen Russian assets, the entire plan is “largely a kabuki force,” that is, merely political theater.
Carpenter was equally blunt about the American side of the deal. He dismissed what he called “fantastical” claims that a “Critical Minerals Agreement” could serve as a security guarantee.
He pointed to a Russian missile strike on a US factory in Ukraine that drew no American response, arguing it was proof that the administration’s promises of “air support” will “probably never see the light of day.”Carpenter concluded that the administration’s ultimate goal is to “convince Ukraine to sign up to a peace agreement on almost any terms.”
Trump’s mixed signals
The administration’s public statements, however, offer a complex and often contradictory picture. Just as his special envoy Keith Kellogg was telling reporters in Kyiv that officials were “working very, very hard” on a peace deal, President Trump himself was making a series of contradictory remarks.
After the White House meetings, he said he was setting up a “very good, early step” toward peace, but he also told Fox News that he would not call Putin in front of the European leaders because he “thought that would be disrespectful to President Putin.”
While he is open to providing US air support for a peacekeeping mission, he has ruled out American ground troops. He has also expressed frustration with the slow pace of a peace deal, raising the possibility of new sanctions or tariffs on Russia if no progress is made within two weeks.
The danger of leaks
Kyiv Post also asked Carpenter about reports that the Trump administration had approached former Ukrainian military chief Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhny.
He said the outreach was “likely an attempt to test whether he might be more malleable than Zelensky, both on the question of engaging in talks with Russia and on security guarantees.”
This suggests a potential effort to create internal divisions within Ukraine to facilitate a peace deal more favorable to Moscow.
The ghost of Budapest and the Great Power gambit
For Ukraine, the current diplomatic scramble over security guarantees is a geopolitical game played out under the long, foreboding shadow of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
That agreement, which saw Ukraine relinquish its nuclear arsenal for security assurances, is now widely viewed as an egregious failure of international diplomacy. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and continued aggression in the Donbas proved that such non-binding agreements were no match for a great power’s ambition.
This historical failure is not just a talking point. It’s the very foundation of Ukraine’s skepticism, which Carpenter’s analysis so effectively captures.
The current talks highlight a fundamental and dangerous disconnect between the parties’ goals. Ukraine seeks a credible deterrent to prevent future Russian aggression, an ironclad guarantee that will protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Carpenter’s point that “the only real security guarantee was Nato membership for Ukraine ‘and obviously, that’s anathema to Putin’” reinforces this point. For Kyiv, nothing short of NATO membership, or a functional equivalent, will suffice.
For Moscow, the entire purpose of the war is to ensure Ukraine never joins the alliance and remains, at best, a neutral buffer state – or at worst, a subjugated neighbor. The US, under its current administration, is attempting to end the conflict with minimal American military commitment, a position that signals a clear shift in priorities.
The Europeans, for their part, are not solely concerned with protecting Ukraine; they are also using the crisis as a gambit to bolster NATO’s military capacity in Central Europe.
Carpenter’s core argument that the proposed European force is a “kabuki force” is a direct commentary on this geopolitical theatre. He is suggesting that the promises are being made not to secure Ukraine, but to serve the self-interested goals of the guarantors.
This makes any meaningful agreement a near impossibility, leaving Ukraine to face the prospect of a “peace” that may leave it more vulnerable than ever.