2 hours ago
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he will negotiate with Donald Trump on a US-backed peace plan that called on Kyiv to make painful concessions in order to end the Kremlin’s invasion of his country.
Zelenskyy’s office on Thursday confirmed that he had received the draft peace plan, which was prepared by US and Russian officials, and that he would speak with Trump in the coming days about “existing diplomatic opportunities and the main points that are necessary for peace”.
“We agreed to work on the points of the plan so that it would bring a worthy end to the war,” Zelenskyy’s office said in a statement.
The cautious response from Ukraine’s presidential administration followed angry denouncements of the plan by some Ukrainian officials as “absurd” and unacceptable. Zelenskyy’s public statement came as he held talks on Thursday with a high-ranking US army delegation.
Other officials in Kyiv said the proposal reportedly drafted by Kirill Dmitriev, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff was a “provocation”, the aim of which was to stir up division and “disorientate” Ukraine’s allies, they added.
“There are currently no signs that the Kremlin is ready for serious negotiations. Putin is trying to stall for time and avoid US sanctions,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine’s foreign policy parliamentary committee. He dismissed Dmitriev as a “nobody”.
Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called the initiative unrealistic. He suggested it was a classic Soviet-style information operation to influence opinion and sow panic.
According to media reports, the sweeping 28-point proposal closely resembles demands made by Moscow soon after its full-scale invasion in early 2022. It was reportedly drawn up by Russian and US officials, with support from Donald Trump. Kyiv was not consulted. One European diplomat said they only learned of the plan when they turned on the news.
It envisages Ukraine giving up the northern part of the Donbas region, which it controls, to Russia, and cutting the size of its army in half. Ukraine would also be forced to relinquish its long-range weapons, used to strike military targets inside Russia.
No foreign troops would be allowed on Ukrainian soil, a condition that rules out a post-deal peacekeeping force led by the UK and France. But the US would provide unspecified security guarantees, according to Axios.
The Russian language and Russian Orthodox church would be given formal status under longstanding Kremlin demands.
Ukrainian officials said the document amounted to Ukraine’s capitulation and an effective end to its sovereignty. It comes nearly four years after Russian troops tried, and failed, to seize Kyiv, and as efforts by the Trump administration to end the conflict remain stalled.
On Thursday, Zelenskyy met the US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, whom Trump named last week as a “special representative”. Driscoll is on a fact-finding mission to Kyiv, with a brief to examine the war and Ukrainian drone production. It is unclear if the talks included the US’s draft plan.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special representative to Ukraine, has reportedly announced his resignation, saying he would leave in January after a year in the post. Kellogg is regarded as being broadly sympathetic to Ukraine and has been consequently left out of direct US-Russian talks.
The White House’s renewed push to force Ukraine to make significant concessions in pursuit of “peace” comes at a difficult time for Zelenskyy, who is embroiled in the biggest political scandal since he became president in 2019.
His former business partner Timur Mindich and at least two government ministers are accused of involvement in a large-scale bribery scheme. Several deputies from Zelenskyy’s own Servant of the People party have called on the president to dismiss Andriy Yermak, his powerful chief of staff.
One western diplomat said the Russians were seeking to take advantage of Ukraine’s domestic crisis. “It seems Dmitriev has spun this plan at a time when Zelenskyy is weak. The Russians are good at exploiting things,” they said. “It feels like every other Russian plan. I don’t think it’s going to fly with Ukraine.”
The diplomat said the Kremlin’s demands concerning the Russian language were a “hook” it could later exploit. The proposal did not offer the kind of security assurances Ukraine would need from the US and its European allies for any deal to stick, they added.
European leaders meeting in Brussels said they had not been warned in advance about the latest White House initiative. The Trump administration no longer provided direct military aid to Kyiv, a fact that reduced its ability to impose a Moscow-friendly peace settlement on Ukraine, one source noted.
“We commend peace efforts, but Europe is the main supporter of Ukraine and it’s, of course, Europe’s security that’s at stake. So we expect to be consulted,” said Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said Europe welcomed any efforts to achieve a long-lasting and just settlement of the war, but stressed: “For any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board.”
Kallas said the Dmitriev-Witkoff proposal did not envisage Russia making any concessions. “We have to understand that in this war, there is one aggressor and one victim. If Russia really wanted peace, it could have agreed to an unconditional ceasefire already some time ago.”
The British government said it backed Trump’s desire to “bring this barbaric war to an end”. But it emphasised that “only the Ukrainian people can determine their future” and said Russia could end the fighting tomorrow by pulling out troops and ending its “illegal invasion”.
The White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, declined to comment on the peace plan. “I would agree that that’s an issue which the president has continued to put at the forefront of our foreign policy goal, which is to reach a settlement in the Ukraine-Russia war, so that we can have peace in Europe and we can end the killing and the slaughter of so many innocents,” he said.
US efforts to broker peace have hit roadblocks since Trump met Putin in Alaska in August. The US president subsequently imposed sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, in an apparent attempt to push Putin to the negotiating table.
Trump said last month that he was putting on hold his plan for a meeting with the Russian president in Budapest because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time”. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, met in Ankara, saying they were committed to finding a peaceful settlement.
In recent months Russia has increased its systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, plunging much of the country into darkness. On Wednesday it bombed several western cities, including Ternopil, where 26 people, including three children, were killed in their homes.
