United States delivers peace plan for Ukraine, sparking fears of ‘capitulation’

A US military delegation led by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll delivered Thursday a new draft proposal to end the war in Ukraine even as European and Ukrainian officials warned that any deal should not involve the country’s “capitulation.”

Kyiv’s main European partners said they should be included in any proposals for the future security of the continent, as European officials indicated they had not been consulted or even briefed on Washington’s plan, details of which have emerged in leaks to the press.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he discussed with the US military envoys on Thursday “options for achieving a genuine peace, the sequencing of work and formats for dialogue, as well as new momentum for diplomacy.”

“Our teams - from Ukraine and the United States - will work on the points of the plan to end the war. We are ready for constructive, honest, and swift work,” he said in a statement.

His office added he would speak in the coming days with President Donald Trump about the “diplomatic opportunities and the key points required to achieve peace.”

A US official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions said Mr Driscoll and Mr Zelensky “agreed on an aggressive timeline” to move ahead, but declined to characterise the contents of the proposal.

Versions of the proposal, however, leaked earlier and prompted one of Mr Zelensky’s advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, to slam it as amounting to no more than Ukraine’s “unconditional capitulation.”

Special envoy Steve Witkoff is quietly pushing a plan that contains provisions that Ukraine has long opposed, including forcing it to cede strategic territory not yet seized by Russia in the eastern Donbas region and agreeing to significant reductions in the size and effectiveness of its military, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

“We want a just peace that respects everyone’s sovereignty, a durable peace that cannot be challenged by future aggression,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Thursday. “But peace cannot be capitulation. We do not want the capitulation of Ukraine.”

He repeated European calls for an agreement to start with a ceasefire along the current line of contact, so that negotiations on territory and security guarantees can follow.

“We commend peace efforts but Europe is the main supporter of Ukraine, and it is of course Europe’s security at stake, so we expect to be consulted,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters.

Ukraine should not face restrictions on its military, Mr Sikorski said, calling for Russia’s “aggressive potential” to be restricted instead. But asked if any European officials were included in drafting the US plan, he said, “Not to my knowledge.”

News of the revised peace proposal follows a secretive meeting in Miami this past weekend between Mr Witkoff and Mr Zelensky’s top advisers, according to people familiar with the situation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.

One of the people familiar with the situation said the plan involved conditions long pushed by Moscow that were unacceptable to Mr Zelensky.

The proposal calls for reducing the size of Ukraine’s armed forces by more than half, forcing Kyiv to cede all of the heavily fortified Donetsk region to Russia - which Moscow has not been able to capture entirely in the course of the war - as well as banning Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons.

It also ruled out the presence of foreign troops, which Kyiv’s European backers have offered to send to deter Russia from attacking again, according to another person familiar with the proposal.

It further involves recognising Russia’s control of the territory it has illegally seized.

Kyiv has long feared any such arrangement, as it would give Moscow an upper hand territorially and militarily to eventually launch a new invasion.

Throughout negotiations this year, Kyiv has remained adamant that it will not cede land to Russia that it has not already seized militarily. Ukraine has instead proposed a ceasefire that pauses the war at its current front lines.

Even in that scenario, Ukraine has never suggested it would formally recognise its sovereign territory seized by Russia as Russian.

Kyiv has also insisted that its own military is its strongest security guarantee, and allowing Moscow to dictate the size of its military would be seen by Ukrainians as a betrayal of the country’s independence.

Mr Zelensky’s European allies have repeatedly tried to sway the Trump Administration away from terms they see as favourable to Russia, rejecting limits on their effort to beef up the Ukrainian armed forces.

“Russia is not offering a diplomatic settlement; it is offering Ukraine unconditional capitulation,” Mr Podolyak, the Ukrainian presidential adviser, said on X, while a senior lawmaker, Iryna Gerashchenko, described the leaked plan as an attempt to test whether Ukraine is ready “for submission.”

Mr Zelensky has been weakened in recent weeks by a major corruption scandal that has ensnared several of his close associates, and which - coupled with the exhausting pace of Russian military strikes and slow advances on the ground - could leave the Ukrainian leader with diminishing options as US officials exert greater pressure on him to accept a deal to end the war.

But analysts said the darkening outlook could act to strengthen Mr Zelensky’s refusal to make concessions.

“Domestic political challenges from the corruption case are unlikely to make Zelensky more amenable to Russian demands, as the public and military would strongly object, creating bigger problems for him,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers broached news of the US plan at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

Some ministers said they learned of the proposal’s details only in media reports, even though European nations have become Ukraine’s chief providers of financial and military aid since the Trump administration scaled back U.S. support.

“We have seen this before,” Ms Kallas told reporters Thursday. “Different peace plans cannot work if Ukrainians and Europeans do not agree to this,” she said, adding that they hadn’t seen “any concession from the Russian side.”

One of the people familiar with the negotiations said that the previous expectation had been that the US Administration would pressure Russia into negotiations in the spring, to give time for tough new US sanctions imposed on Russia to bite deeper into its budget revenue, rather than during the winter when Russia has the upper hand militarily.

“Ukraine will survive this winter,” said a Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The new sanctions represent “only the beginning of the economic pressure on Russia. There is no need to rush.”

The most important element of any peace agreement are security guarantees to safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, the official said.

“The main issue is what kind of solid credible security guarantees Ukraine will get to be certain that Russia is not going to invade again,” the official said. “There is no space for discussing any limitation of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

“The President couldn’t sign this paper without any guarantees because it wouldn’t be accepted by even his own (lawmakers). It’s unacceptable. It’s a bad deal,” the official added.

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