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Spe­cial U.S. en­voy Steve Witkoff said Sun­day that Russ­ian leader Vladimir Putin agreed at his sum­mit with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to al­low the U.S. and Eu­ro­pean al­lies to of­fer Ukraine a se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tee re­sem­bling NA­TO’s col­lec­tive de­fense man­date as part of an even­tu­al deal to end the 3 1/2-year war.

“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,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He added that it “was the first time we had ever heard the Rus­sians agree to that.”

Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen, speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence in Brus­sels with Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy, said that “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.”