Washington and Kyiv have moved closer to a shared framework to end the war in Ukraine, amid ongoing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues.
Revealing the latest state of the peace talks mediated by Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears to have secured several significant concessions compared to earlier versions of the plan that has now been outlined, following intensive negotiations with the US negotiating team.
Whether or not it is accepted by Moscow, this represents a success for Kyiv in revising an early US draft that had been criticized as reflecting the Kremlin’s wish list. Zelenskyy said he expected US negotiators to contact the Kremlin on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s best hope may lie elsewhere, as Russia continues its slow advance on the battlefield, The Guardian reports.
In the latest version of the peace plan, Ukraine accepts in principle the establishment of a demilitarized zone in its eastern regions—an issue that has long been a stumbling block—on the condition that Russia carries out a corresponding withdrawal of its forces.
Details of the proposal have been delivered to Russian President Vladimir Putin by his envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and a Kremlin spokesperson said Moscow was formulating its response and would not comment publicly at this stage.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Dmitriev had briefed Putin on his recent trip to Miami for talks with Trump’s envoys. Peskov declined to comment on Russia’s reaction to the proposals or on the exact format of the documents, saying the Kremlin would not communicate through the media.
“All the key parameters of Russia’s position are well known to our colleagues in the United States,” Peskov told reporters.
In recent weeks, Putin has said that his conditions for peace include Ukraine ceding around 5,000 square kilometers of the Donbas that it still controls and Kyiv formally abandoning its bid to join the NATO military alliance.
However, within the complex choreography of ongoing negotiations, Ukraine would accept several uncomfortable concessions. These include withdrawing some Ukrainian troops from areas it controls along the eastern front line and relinquishing its long-declared ambition to join NATO, in exchange for US–European security guarantees modeled on NATO’s Article 5. At least publicly, it remains unclear what form such security guarantees would take.
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 deployed along the line of contact to monitor implementation.
Zelenskyy presented the plan during a two-hour briefing with journalists. He suggested that the proposals place Ukraine in a stronger position, with Moscow facing the risk that the United States would significantly increase arms supplies to Kyiv and escalate sanctions if Putin rejects the plan.
“In the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, the troop deployment line as of the date of this agreement is de facto recognized as the line of contact,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the latest draft.
“A working group will be established to determine the redeployment of forces necessary to end the conflict, as well as to define the parameters of potential special economic zones in the future,” he added.
This appears to suggest that the plan opens the door to—but postpones—options Ukraine had previously been reluctant to consider, such as troop withdrawals and the creation of demilitarized 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 solution,” Zelenskyy said. “They are looking for a demilitarized zone or a free economic zone—meaning a format that could satisfy both sides.”
Any plan involving the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops would have to be approved through a referendum in Ukraine, Zelenskyy added. “A free economic zone—if we are discussing this, then we must go to a referendum,” he said, referring to plans to designate areas from which Ukraine would withdraw as demilitarized free-trade zones.
On NATO, Zelenskyy said: “It is the choice of NATO members whether they want Ukraine or not. Our choice has been made. We withdrew the proposed constitutional amendments that would have barred Ukraine from joining NATO.”
Zelenskyy’s press conference followed repeated efforts by Donald Trump to broker an end to the four-year war triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, eastern Ukraine has been devastated, and millions have been forced to flee their homes. Russian troops are advancing along the front line and striking Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure with nightly barrages of missiles and drones. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday that it had taken control of another Ukrainian settlement in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
In 2022, Moscow claimed it had annexed four Ukrainian regions—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia—in addition to Crimea, which it occupied in 2014.
