The security guarantees Western nations are discussing with Kyiv could produce exactly the outcome Moscow claims to fear most: NATO forces stationed on Ukrainian territory. Rather than resolving the conflict, this dynamic risks hardening Russian resistance to any deal.

Samuel Charap and Jennifer Kavanagh lay out this paradox in a Foreign Affairs analysis, as "Hvylya" reports. The assurances Kyiv is negotiating with its Western partners would result in a "coalition of the willing," led by France and the United Kingdom, deploying forces to Ukraine after a cease-fire. European nations would also support an 800,000-person peacetime Ukrainian military.

For Russia, this is the opposite of reassurance. Moscow has consistently argued that Ukraine must not become a forward base for NATO - and a postwar arrangement that places allied troops and funds a massive standing army does precisely that. "This outcome would ultimately heighten Russia's perceived insecurity, no matter how much land Moscow gets in the bargain," the authors write.

The paradox extends to the Ukrainian side. Kyiv needs guarantees that are strong enough to deter a future Russian attack. But the stronger those guarantees become - particularly if they involve physical troop deployments - the more they trigger the exact Russian anxieties that fueled the invasion. The Trump administration's formula, Charap and Kavanagh argue, cannot square this circle because it treats security as something that can be bartered through territorial concessions.

Before the invasion, Moscow demanded limits on NATO's eastern posture. The current negotiation track offers Russia land but potentially delivers what the Kremlin views as a greater threat: a permanently armed and Western-backed Ukraine with allied soldiers on its soil. Charap and Kavanagh argue that any viable deal must address this contradiction head-on, rather than hoping territorial concessions will paper over it.

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