The US has signaled to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine must accept a US-drafted proposal to end the war with Russia that would involve Ukraine ceding territory and accepting limits on its military, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Axios also reported that the US has drafted the proposal with Russian input and is asking for Ukraine to cede the territory it still controls in the eastern Donbas region, where Russian forces continue to make gains. In the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts, the battle lines would mostly be frozen in place, though Russia would return some land in certain areas.
A US official told Axios that Ukraine is likely to eventually lose the territory it would cede under the peace deal, so “therefore, it is in Ukraine’s interest to reach a deal now.” The report said that under the proposal, the US and other countries would recognize Russian control over Crimea and the Donbas but wouldn’t ask Ukraine to do so.
The US also includes some sort of US security guarantee for Ukraine, but it’s likely that any US pledge to defend Ukrainian territory wouldn’t be acceptable to Moscow. Russia has previously proposed the idea that a group of countries, including the permanent members of the UN Security Council, should be responsible for Ukraine’s security.
According to Axios, US envoy Steve Witkoff drafted a 28-point peace plan with input from Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev and Rustem Umerov, Zelensky’s national security adviser. However, a US official speaking to Axios said that Zelensky had walked back many of the understandings on the plan reached between Witkoff and Umerov.
Witkoff was supposed to meet with Zelensky and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara on Wednesday, but the meeting was cancelled over the lack of Ukrainian support for the US plan. “We are now going to wait. The ball is in Zelensky’s court,” the US official speaking to Axios said.
