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"We were able to get this concession: 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." Witkoff said it was the first time he had heard Putin agree to that.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a joint press conference in Brussels with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday that"we welcome President Trump's willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine. and the 'coalition of the good will' - including the European Union - stands ready to contribute."

Witkoff said the two sides had agreed on "strong security guarantees, which I would describe as crucial."

He added that Russia has stated that it will commit to not seeking to acquire additional territories in Ukraine.

Zelensky thanked the United States for recent signals that Washington was ready to support security guarantees for Ukraine, but said that the details were still unclear.

"It is important that America agrees to work with Europe to provide security guarantees for Ukraine," he said,"but there are no details on how that will work and what America's role will be, what Europe's role will be and what the EU can do, and that is our main task, we need security to work in practice, just like NATO's Article 5, and we believe that joining the EU is part of the security guarantees."

Witkoff defended Trump's decision to drop pressure on Russia to agree to an immediate ceasefire, saying the president has refocused on a peace agreement because so much progress has been made.

"We covered almost all the other issues needed for a peace agreement," Witkoff said, without going into further detail.

"We started to see some moderation in how they were thinking about how to get a final peace agreement," he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there would be"additional consequences" if they failed to reach a ceasefire. However, Rubio said no ceasefire agreement would be reached if Ukraine did not participate in the talks.

"Now, at the end of the day, if there's no peace deal, if there's no end to this war, the president has made it clear that there will be consequences," Rubio said on ABC's "This Week." "But we're trying to avoid that. And the way we're trying to avoid those consequences is with even better consequences, which is peace, an end to hostilities."

He also said that achieving peace would not be easy and that it would require a lot of work.