Washington and Kyiv have edged closer to a jointly agreed formula to end the war in Ukraine amid continuing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues.
Revealing the latest status of the peace talks, brokered by Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, appeared to have secured several important concessions from earlier versions of the now slimmed-down plan after intense talks with the US negotiating team.
Regardless of whether it is accepted by Moscow, it marks a success for Kyiv in rewriting an earlier US draft that had been criticised as a Kremlin wishlist. Zelenskyy said he expected US negotiators to be in contact with the Kremlin on Wednesday.
In the latest version of the peace plan, Ukraine accepts the principle of a demilitarised zone in its eastern regions, control of which has long been a stumbling block, with the insistence that Russia make a similar pullback of forces.
Details of the proposal have been sent to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, by his envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and a Kremlin spokesperson said Moscow was formulating its response and would not immediately comment publicly.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Dmitriev had briefed Putin on his recent trip to Miami for talks with Trump’s envoys. Peskov refused to be drawn on Russia’s reaction to the proposals, or the exact format of the documents, saying the Kremlin was not going to communicate via the media.
“All the main parameters of the Russian position are well known to our colleagues from the United States,” Peskov told reporters.
Putin has said in recent weeks that his conditions for peace are that Ukraine should cede about 5,000 sq km of Donbas, which it still controls, and that Kyiv should officially renounce its intention to join Nato’s military alliance.
In the continuing complex choreography of negotiations, however, Ukraine will agree to several uncomfortable concessions. That includes a pullback of some Ukrainian troops from the area it controls on the eastern frontline, and giving up on its long-vaunted ambition for Nato membership in exchange for US-European security guarantees mirroring Nato’s Article 5 provision. It remained unclear, in public at least, what those security guarantees would look like.
The latest plan also calls for the withdrawal of Russian forces from the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Sumy and Kharkiv, with international troops to be stationed along the contact line to monitor implementation.
Zelenskyy presented the plan during a two-hour briefing with journalists, reading from a highlighted and annotated version. He suggested the proposals put Ukraine in a stronger position, with Moscow facing the risk that the US will supply Kyiv with substantially increased arms and escalating sanctions if Putin rejects the plan.
Zelenskyy told reporters: “[Moscow] cannot tell President Trump: ‘Look, we are against a peaceful settlement. That is, if they try to obstruct everything, then President Trump would have to arm us heavily, while imposing all possible sanctions against them.
“In the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, the line of troop deployment as of the date of this agreement is de facto recognised as the line of contact,” Zelenskyy said of the latest draft.
“A working group will convene to determine the redeployment of forces necessary to end the conflict, as well as to define the parameters of potential future special economic zones,” he added.
This appears to suggest the plan opens the way for – but delays options that Ukraine was previously reluctant to consider – a withdrawal of troops and the creation of demilitarised zones.
“We are in a situation where the Russians want us to withdraw from the Donetsk region, while the Americans are trying to find a way,” Zelenskyy said. “They are looking for a demilitarised zone or a free economic zone, meaning a format that could satisfy both sides.”
Any plan that involves Ukraine pulling back its troops would need to pass a referendum in Ukraine, Zelenskyy added. “A free economic zone. If we are discussing this, then we need to go to a referendum,” Zelensky said, referring to plans to designate areas that Ukraine pulls out from as a demilitarised free-trade zone.
On Nato, Zelensky said: “It is the choice of Nato members whether to have Ukraine or not. Our choice has been made. We moved away from the proposed changes to the constitution of Ukraine that would have prohibited Ukraine from joining Nato.”
Russia, however, has long insisted on full control of Donetsk and it remains highly uncertain that it would accept either a suggested demilitarised buffer zone or a withdrawal of its forces, even as other sticking points remain, including control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant that Kyiv says should be jointly managed by the US and Ukraine.
Zelenskyy’s press conference was held after Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to try broker an to end the four-year war, triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Tens of thousands have been killed, eastern Ukraine decimated and millions forced to flee their homes. Russian troops are advancing on the front and hammering cities and Ukraine’s energy grid with nightly missile and drone barrages. The defence ministry on Wednesday said it had captured another Ukrainian settlement in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
In 2022, Moscow claimed to have annexed four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia – in addition to the Crimean peninsula which it seized in 2014.