Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top security official denied on Friday that he had agreed to a Trump administration peace plan, and European leaders hastily sought a response to a draft that endorses most of Russia’s key wartime demands.
Washington has presented Kyiv with a 28-point plan that would require Kyiv to give up additional territory, scale back the size of its military and forever abandon hope of joining the Nato alliance.
Ukraine’s European allies said they had not been consulted over the plan and scheduled an urgent phone call to discuss the situation. Britain and Germany said their leaders would take part.
Zelensky’s office did not say whether he would join in.
US officials said the plan was drafted after consultations with Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, a close Zelensky ally who served as defence minister until July.
“This plan was drawn up immediately following discussions with one of the most senior members of President Zelensky’s administration, Rustem Umerov, who agreed to the majority of the plan, after making several modifications, and presented it to President Zelensky,” a senior US official said on Thursday.
But Umerov said on Friday he had not discussed the plan’s terms, much less approved them.
“During my visit to the United States, my role was technical organising meetings and preparing the dialogue. I provided no assessments or, even more so, approvals of any points. This is not within my authority and does not correspond to the procedure,” he wrote on Telegram.
After meeting a visiting US delegation on Friday, Umerov said Kyiv would not accept a plan that violates its sovereignty.
‘We are ready for constructive, hard work’: Zelensky
Zelensky, who met a US Army delegation on Thursday, has acknowledged receiving the plan but has not commented directly on its contents.
“Our teams — Ukraine and the USA — will work on the points of the plan to end the war,” the president wrote overnight on Telegram. “We are ready for constructive, honest and prompt work.”
The Kremlin, which has so far been cautious in public, said Russia had not received anything official from the United States about a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine.
Kyiv should make a “responsible decision” and do it now, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Russia’s demands spelt out, Kyiv’s left vague
The plan, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, includes terms that Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed as tantamount to surrender after their soldiers fended off a full-scale Russian invasion for nearly four years at huge cost.
It would require Ukraine to withdraw from territory it still controls in eastern provinces that Russia claims to have annexed, while Russia would give up smaller amounts of land it has captured in other regions.
Ukraine would be permanently barred from joining the Nato military alliance, and its armed forces would be capped at 600,000 troops. Nato would agree never to station troops there.
Sanctions against Russia would be gradually lifted, Moscow would be invited back into the G8 group of industrialised countries, and frozen Russian assets would be pooled in an investment fund, with Washington given some of the profits.
One of Ukraine’s main demands, for enforceable guarantees equivalent to the Nato alliance’s mutual defence clause to deter Russia from attacking again, is dealt with in a single line with no details: “Ukraine will receive robust security guarantees”.
A US delegation in Kyiv was expected to brief European embassies there on its contents later on Friday. European countries are now funding Ukraine’s defence alone after US President Donald Trump cancelled financial support.
“We have always said [the] for any plan to work, it needs to be with Ukraine and the Europeans on board,” the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said in Brussels.
Trump, who returned to office this year vowing to quickly end the war, has accepted some of Russia’s justifications for its 2022 invasion of its neighbour while also expressing some impatience with Moscow.
Last month, he cancelled a proposed summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and imposed sanctions on Russia’s two main oil companies, a step not taken by his pro-Ukrainian predecessor Joe Biden.
The full force of those sanctions was due to come into effect on Friday, Washington’s deadline for foreign buyers of Russian oil to wind down purchases.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a news briefing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US special envoy Steve Witkoff had quietly worked on the plan for about a month and that Trump supports it.
“This plan was crafted to reflect the realities of the situation, after five years of a devastating war, to find the best win-win scenario, where both parties gain more than they must give,” she said.
The acceleration in US diplomacy comes at a time when Ukrainian troops are on the back foot on the battlefield and Zelensky’s government has been undermined by a corruption scandal. Parliament fired two cabinet ministers on Wednesday.
Ukrainian forces repelled Russia’s initial assault on Kyiv in 2022, but their attempted counteroffensive failed in 2023.
With the war’s fourth winter approaching, Russian troops occupy almost one-fifth of Ukraine and have been grinding slowly forward along a 1,200-kilometre front line while bombarding Ukrainian energy supplies.
Russia says it has taken control of the city of Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine and most of Pokrovsk in the east, its first big prizes in nearly two years. Kyiv denies losing control of those cities but has acknowledged that Russia is advancing.
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