By Lili Bayer and Olena Harmash
BRUSSELS/KYIV (Reuters) -European countries pushed back on Thursday against a U.S.-backed peace plan for Ukraine that sources said would require Kyiv to give up more land and partially disarm, conditions long seen by Ukraine’s allies as tantamount to capitulation.
Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday that Washington had signalled to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Ukraine must accept a U.S.-drafted framework to end the war, which includes territorial concessions and curbs to Ukraine’s armed forces. The sources spoke on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The acceleration in U.S. diplomacy comes at an awkward juncture for Kyiv, with its troops on the back foot at the front and Zelenskiy’s government undermined by a corruption scandal. Parliament fired two cabinet ministers on Wednesday.
Moscow played down any new U.S. initiative.
“Consultations are not currently underway. There are contacts, of course, but there is no process that could be called consultations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
He said Russia had nothing to add beyond the position President Vladimir Putin laid out at a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in August, adding that any peace deal must address the “root causes of the conflict”, a phrase Moscow has long used to refer to its demands.
‘PEACE CANNOT BE CAPITULATION,’ SAYS FRANCE
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels were careful not to comment in too much detail about a U.S. peace plan that has not been made public. But they made clear they would not accept demands for punishing concessions from Kyiv.
“Ukrainians want peace – a just peace that respects everyone’s sovereignty, a durable peace that can’t be called into question by future aggression,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot. “But peace cannot be a capitulation.”
The White House has not commented on the reported proposals. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that Washington would “continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict”.
“…Achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions,” Rubio added.
A U.S. Army delegation, led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and the Army’s Chief of Staff Randy George, was in Kyiv and expected to meet Zelenskiy late on Thursday.
They met Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi late on Wednesday. Syrskyi said he told them the best way to secure a just peace was to defend Ukraine’s airspace, extend its ability to strike deep into Russia and stabilise the front line.
FOURTH WINTER APPROACHING
Russia has been pounding Ukrainian cities and infrastructure with nightly bombardments, killing civilians and causing power cuts as winter sets in. Authorities said 22 people were still missing and 26 dead from airstrikes that destroyed an apartment block early on Wednesday, one of the worst attacks in months.
In Ternopil in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles from the front, smoke was still rising from smouldering masonry as crews on cranes tried to make nearby buildings safe and uncover more bodies.
Ihor Cherepanskyi was searching for the body of his great-grandmother who had lived on the sixth floor. After the strike he had run into the building to try to rescue her, but made it only as far as the fifth floor before the ceiling caved in.
“What kind of ‘strategic target’ is this?” he said.
With the fourth winter approaching of Europe’s deadliest war in eight decades, Russian troops have been inching forward and are poised to finally capture their first substantial city in nearly two years, the ruined eastern railway hub of Pokrovsk.
Ukraine said on Thursday it had received 1,000 bodies from Russia in the latest swap of human remains from the battlefield.
Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine and says it will fight on unless Ukraine cedes additional land, accepts permanent neutrality and cuts its armed forces.
Ukraine says that would amount to capitulation and leave it unprotected should Russia attack again.
After the early months when Ukraine fended off Russia’s assault on Kyiv and recaptured swathes of territory, the war has settled for three years into a relentless grind along a 1,000-km (621-mile) front line, with huge losses on both sides.
A Ukrainian counterattack stalled in 2023, and since then Moscow has made slow but relentless progress, with the enemies separated across a charred no-man’s land, hunting each other’s forces down with drones.
Moscow says its expected capture of Pokrovsk will lead to further battlefield gains. Kyiv says Russia’s advances have only limited strategic significance but it lacks the capability to halt them.
Trump, who returned to office this year vowing to swiftly end the war, has reoriented U.S. policy away from staunchly supporting Ukraine towards accepting some of Moscow’s justifications for its invasion.
But he has also imposed sanctions on Russia’s two main oil companies, a step never taken by his more overtly pro-Ukrainian predecessor Joe Biden. Friday, November 21 is the deadline for foreign buyers of Russian oil to wind down their purchases.
(Reporting by Brussels and Kyiv newsroomsWriting by Peter GraffEditing by Gareth Jones)
