Kyiv on the clock to agree Trump plan to end war

Ukraine is under pressure to respond this week to a series of far-reaching Trump administration ideas for a ceasefire, including potential US recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

A rescue worker puts out a fire at a perfume and cosmetics factory destroyed by a Russian strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Picture: AP.

Ukraine is under pressure to respond this week to a series of far-reaching Trump administration ideas for how to end the war in Ukraine, including potential US recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and excluding Kyiv from joining NATO.

The ideas were outlined in a confidential document presented by senior Trump administration officials to their Ukrainian counterparts in Paris on Thursday, according to Western officials. They were also shared with senior European officials at the daylong meeting.

The US is now waiting for Kyiv’s response, which is expected to come at a meeting of US, Ukrainian and European officials in London later this week. Then if there is a convergence among the American, European and Ukrainian positions, the proposals could be floated to Moscow.

To put pressure on Ukraine and Russia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the administration may pause its negotiating efforts if headway isn’t made on core issues in the next several weeks.

“The Ukrainians have to go back home, they have to run it by their president, they have to take into account their views on all of this,” Rubio said. “But we need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”

The US diplomatic push is intended to set the stage for a ceasefire, which would be broadly along current battle lines, and an eventual settlement. Accepting some of the Trump administration’s ideas could prove difficult for Kyiv since Ukraine has refused to accept that Russia has a legal claim to any of its territory.

A senior State Department official on Sunday cast the ideas presented to the Ukrainians as options for Kyiv to weigh and not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The official said a “list of potential options” was shared “for discussion and feedback.” A spokesman for the National Security Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, the retired Army lieutenant general who serves as an envoy to Ukraine, met on Thursday in Paris with senior Ukrainian officials, including Andriy Yermak, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.

Rubio, Witkoff and Kellogg are planning to attend the coming London meeting, according to US officials. After that, Witkoff might make another trip to Russia, though no travel has been announced.

Witkoff, a real-estate executive who is close to Trump, has met with Russian President Putin three times and reported that he has made progress in his discussions with the Kremlin leader. Other US officials have advised Trump to be more sceptical of Putin’s intentions.

A US move to recognise the Russian seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 would reverse a more than decade of American policy from both Democratic and Republican administrations. In 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who served during the first Trump administration, denounced Russia’s annexation of Crimea as a threat to “a bedrock international principle shared by democratic states: that no country can change the borders of another by force.”

The US Congress has passed legislation opposing US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The ideas presented by the US in Paris also include ruling out Ukraine’s membership in NATO. “NATO isn’t on the table,” Kellogg said in an appearance on Fox News Saturday.

Yet another US idea, Western officials said, calls for designating the territory around the nuclear reactor in Zaporizhzhia as neutral territory that could be under American control.

In a March call with Zelensky, Trump raised the possibility that the US would acquire Ukrainian power plants, including nuclear facilities, calling it the “best protection for that infrastructure.” The Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest in Europe, would then presumably feed power to both Ukrainian territory and regions that Moscow has conquered since its invasion of 2022 and that remain under its control.

The ideas put forth by the Trump administration fall short of some Russian demands, according to Western officials. They would not concede that Russia has a legal right to control four regions in the eastern part of Ukraine that it claims to have annexed, though they don’t require the Russian military to leave those areas. The idea that the US consider recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea was earlier reported by Bloomberg.

The US, Western officials say, is also not proposing a cap on Ukrainian forces and isn’t precluding Western military support for Kyiv or the deployment of European troops there, a key sticking point with Moscow.

“Every sovereign nation on Earth has a right to defend itself,” Rubio said Friday. “Ukraine will have a right to defend itself and to enter into whatever agreements it wants to enter into on a bilateral basis with different countries and so forth.”

While the Trump administration temporarily withheld arms and intelligence from Ukraine to pressure it to seek a diplomatic compromise with Russia, it hasn’t imposed economic sanctions or taken any concrete steps to pressure Putin.

Ukraine has said it is willing to agree to a comprehensive 30-day ceasefire if the Kremlin follows suit. Several days ago, Putin declared a short ceasefire for the Easter holiday but Ukrainian officials said Moscow continued to carry out attacks during the religious holiday.

There is still no resolution regarding what types of security guarantees Ukraine might receive if it agrees to a peace settlement. The Trump administration hasn’t said if it is willing to provide any military support to European nations that send troops to Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” to deter future Russian aggression.

The Kremlin has signalled its interest in a lifting of US sanctions and in rekindling economic ties with the US during talks in Moscow and in Saudi Arabia ushered by Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev.

Dow Jones