How Ukraine Has Responded to Trump’s Peace Plan and Russia’s Demands for Territory

A Ukrainian peace plan, sent this week to Washington, pushes back against President Trump’s proposal that Ukraine give up more land for peace, although Russia is unlikely to accept it.

Three weeks ago, President Trump sent shock waves across Europe with a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine that strongly echoed Russian talking points.

Now, Ukraine’s leaders have responded with a counterproposal that demands legal guarantees of protection against future Russian aggression and ensures that Ukraine would hold onto land it currently controls, according to descriptions of the plan by European leaders and diplomats, and accounts from officials who have seen or been briefed on it.

The 20-point Ukrainian plan for ending nearly four years of fighting, unlikely to be accepted by Russia, is part of a Ukrainian attempt to stymie Mr. Trump’s demand, made in his proposal last month, that Ukraine secure peace by relinquishing more land than Russia now occupies. Ukrainian and European leaders say that would humiliate Kyiv while rewarding Russia for its aggression.

In news briefings this week, Mr. Zelensky has said the Ukrainian proposal now under discussion consists of three documents, including one that lays out plans for rebuilding parts of the country that have been reduced to rubble and another that would commit the United States and European nations to come to Ukraine’s aid if it were attacked again.

The proposal removed parts of Mr. Trump’s original plan that crossed Ukrainian red lines, according to five current and former Western officials familiar with the plan. All spoke on condition of anonymity to speak more freely about sensitive diplomacy.

In particular, it said that Ukraine should retain control of areas in eastern Ukraine that the Trump plan had said it should cede, according to two senior European officials and a former American official.

It also removed an American demand that Ukraine renounce its right to join NATO, according to a senior European official and a former one, to preserve the principle, at least, of NATO’s open door policy. Both changes are likely to be unacceptable to Russia, which wants to control more Ukrainian territory and prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO, and it is also assumed that Mr. Trump would veto Ukrainian membership should it apply.

The proposals, sent to Washington for review on Wednesday night, were the product of a flurry of intense diplomacy by Mr. Zelensky in recent days, including meetings in London, Brussels and Rome, and at least one conversation between European leaders and Mr. Trump.

The talks are expected to continue at a meeting of European leaders in Berlin on Monday.

Mr. Zelensky said on Thursday that he had told American negotiators that the security guarantees in the proposal should be submitted to the United States Congress in a bid to make them legally binding. “The security guarantees document we’re working on will ultimately go to Congress,” he told reporters, adding: “We need effective security guarantees.”

In a separate social media post on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky added that it would be critical to ensure that the guarantees are rigorous enough to prevent a future Russian invasion. He said it needed to be more robust than a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum, which only provided Ukraine security “assurances” in return for giving up its inherited nuclear weapons. Russia, which had also signed the memorandum, violated it when it seized Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014.

“That is why it is essential that this document on security guarantees provides concrete answers to what concerns Ukrainians the most,” Mr. Zelensky wrote. “What actions partners will take if Russia decides to launch its aggression again.”

But Mr. Zelensky said the American negotiators had already begun pushing for changes to the Ukrainian proposals.

He said late Thursday night that the United States wanted to create a “free economic zone” in the Ukrainian-held portion of the Donbas, eastern Ukraine, in which neither troops from Ukraine nor troops from Russia would be present. Mr. Zelensky expressed some skepticism about the idea, because it would not require Russian troops to withdraw from the entire Donbas.

“When you talk to us about a compromise,” Mr. Zelensky said about the American proposal, “you must offer a fair compromise.”

Mr. Zelensky has said that, under the Ukrainian Constitution, any concession of territory must be put to voters in Ukraine. Recent surveys have found that most people in the war-torn country do not support the idea of giving up territory to get peace.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, told reporters on Thursday that Mr. Trump “is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war,” adding, “He doesn’t want any more talk. He wants action. He wants this war to come to an end.”

The talks came as details emerged about a meeting in November in Washington between Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, and two senior Ukrainian officials — Rustem Umerov, a senior security official who has led the Ukrainian negotiating delegation in recent weeks, and Oleksandr Poklad, a top official with Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency.

Mr. Umerov had been questioned in a corruption investigation in Ukraine involving allegations that Mr. Zelensky’s former business partner embezzled $100 million from the country’s publicly owned nuclear power company.

The meeting was unusual because Mr. Umerov would not typically meet with the F.B.I. in his negotiating role, and the F.B.I. director would not typically meet with a foreign official linked to a large-scale corruption investigation rocking his country’s politics. Spokespeople for Mr. Umerov and the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Reporting was contributed by Kim Barker from Kyiv, Ukraine; Adam Goldman, Michael Schwirtz and Patrick Kingsley in London; Maggie Haberman in New York; and Ségolène Le Stradic in Paris.

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