European and Ukrainian negotiators were on Sunday locked in talks with US officials in a bid to amend the details of a peace plan proposed by Washington this week which they deem highly favourable to Russia.
The US is pressing Kyiv to accept a 28-point agreement, which is loosely framed and short on detail, by Thursday. The draft incorporates several long-standing Russian demands, while breaching Kyiv’s clear red lines and sidestepping European security concerns.
US officials describe the plan as a working document. But turning it into something more acceptable for Ukraine and its European allies will be a mammoth diplomatic undertaking. Here we look at issues where differences will be extremely difficult to bridge and others where compromise may prove less hard to find.
Would Ukraine give up Donetsk?
The most difficult of all is the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the parts of Donetsk province, in the east of the country, they currently control. It is only article 22d on the list, but might as well be top. It explains the renewed US-Russian push for a peace deal, which would deliver through a diplomatic manoeuvre what President Vladimir Putin’s troops have failed to take since 2014. With Russia’s troops making slow but incremental progress on the Donetsk front, President Donald Trump has become convinced that Russia’s victory there is inevitable.
Giving up territory for which Ukrainians have shed so much blood in defending is likely to be highly contentious and destabilising for Ukraine — which would also serve the Kremlin’s interests. Tens of thousands of remaining Ukrainians living in the area to be handed over would be displaced.
It would mean Ukraine surrendering its “fortress belt” composed of the cities of Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostyantynivka which have formed a bulwark against Russian forces since 2014.
The territory abandoned by Ukraine would become a “neutral demilitarised buffer zone”. But if Russia were to breach that zone in a renewed attack, central Ukraine, including the cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, would be badly exposed.
While Zelenskyy has long accepted that only through diplomacy will Ukraine regain the territory already seized by Russia, he has vehemently opposed any formal recognition of Russian occupation.
The US plan would involve recognising areas currently occupied as “de facto Russian”. On the face of it, that is more palatable to Kyiv and its European allies than formal “de jure” recognition, which would imply that borders can be changed by force in breach of international legal principles.
But, says Marc Weller, director of international law at Chatham House and a professor at the University of Cambridge, the phrase “de facto Russian” is more favourable to Putin than under “de facto Russian control”, as is the use of the word “recognition”.
Will Ukraine get meaningful security guarantees?
The plan says Ukraine “will receive reliable security guarantees,” but offers no specifics while heavily circumscribing what its allies could offer it.
Ukraine would be banned from joining Nato through a change to the alliance’s treaty while Ukraine would change its own constitution to exclude membership, both of which will be politically difficult to deliver.
Nato countries would not be able to station troops in Ukraine, which would scupper the idea of a European reassurance force or a training mission being deployed there.
Kyiv remains wary of vague pledges because of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which offered security assurances from the US and UK but failed to deter Russian military aggression in 2014 and its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Zelenskyy has said that strong security guarantees are essential to any peace deal, aiming to prevent a renewed Russian invasion. He wants an Article 5-style pledge from western partners that would see them respond militarily as well as with harsh sanctions against Russia in response to future attacks.
Ukrainian and US officials have said that talks are happening behind the scenes to decide what the response from the west could be, but anything that does not lay out concrete steps is likely to be a non-starter for Kyiv.
Who gets Russia’s frozen assets?
The US plan would scupper a proposed EU scheme to use Russian frozen assets to raise a €140bn “reparations” loan for Ukraine which the bloc was hoping to approve next month. The bulk of the $300bn of assets immobilised at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion are held in Europe. However, under the proposal, Washington would take $100bn for a US-Ukraine investment vehicle that would deliver half its profits to the US. Europe would add another $100bn and the rest would go to a US-Russia investment venture.
Even with a peace deal, Ukraine will need vast budgetary support from its European allies and long-term funding to train and equip its armed forces. Most EU capitals agree that the reparations loan is the best and cheapest way to deliver this aid. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has championed the idea, was said to be particularly vexed by Washington’s proposed grab.
Should there be a general amnesty?
The peace plan envisages a general amnesty for both sides in the war and an agreement to drop any legal claims. Exoneration of Russia would in itself be extremely hard to swallow for many Ukrainians who have suffered death, destruction, rape and abduction of children at the hands of Russian forces.
Ukraine’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk said a blanket amnesty and the “lack of any negative consequences for aggression” would be the “main disappointment” in the US plan for Ukrainians.
It would also remove the legal underpinning for the EU’s reparations loan, says Yuliya Ziskina of Razom, a pro-Ukraine advocacy group. “If this deal were agreed, the reparations loan becomes legally and financially impossible,” she says.
“Locking in the reparations loan is the most important tool Europe has to ensure that any future negotiations take place on terms shaped by clear principles and real security, not by Ukraine’s forced vulnerability.”
Merz insisted on Sunday that work on the EU loan would continue unaffected by the US plan, but it is hard to see how the assets could be used twice.
Should Ukraine’s army be capped in size?
In principle, limiting the size of Ukraine’s army to 600,000 would be an unacceptable breach of its sovereignty. EU leaders are dead against it, seeing a strong Ukrainian military as Europe’s best buffer against Russian aggression.
But a one-third reduction from today’s headcount would still leave Ukraine a sizeable and formidable army — nearly twice the size of the largest force within the EU. It could also allow some troops who have been fighting for years to demobilise.
But it will concern a population that has been invaded twice in 11 years by a bigger Russian army, especially since the plan offers no reciprocal cap for Moscow.
Already, some military personnel have voiced their opposition to any reduction of the Ukrainian armed forces. “This is direct preparation for a new invasion and weakening of Ukraine to the extent that it will not allow it to prepare for a rebuff,” said Oleksandr Solonko, a communications specialist in the Ukrainian military and a popular commentator.