Ukraine’s leadership has drafted a counterproposal to a Trump administration plan that has drawn criticism for conceding too much to Russia. While the counteroffer digs in on some of Kyiv’s earlier demands, it hints at possible concessions on issues that have long been seen as intractable.
Under the plan, which was obtained by The New York Times, there would be no restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military, “a European security contingent” backed by the United States would be deployed on Ukrainian territory to guarantee security, and frozen Russian assets would be used to repair damage in Ukraine caused during the war.
Those three provisions could be nonstarters for the Kremlin, but parts of the Ukrainian plan suggest a search for common ground. There is no mention, for instance, of Ukraine fully regaining all the territory seized by Russia or an insistence on Ukraine joining NATO, two issues that President Volodymyr Zelensky has long said were not up for negotiations.
Mr. Trump flew to Rome on Friday to attend the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday; Mr. Zelensky had planned to as well, but his spokesman said on Friday that this would depend on the situation in Ukraine, where Russian attacks this week on the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere have left dozens dead and wounded.
In a social media post after landing in Rome, Mr. Trump said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” and urged the two sides to meet directly to “finish it off.” Earlier in the day, he said it was possible he and Mr. Zelensky could meet on the sidelines of the funeral. A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Mr. Zelensky goes to Rome, he might try to present Mr. Trump with Ukraine’s counterproposal personally.
“In the coming days, very significant meetings may take place — meetings that should bring us closer to silence for Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky said on Friday in remarks that were uncharacteristically optimistic when compared with the tone of previous statements this week.
A meeting between the two leaders would be the first since Mr. Zelensky’s disastrous visit to the White House in February, when Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated the Ukrainian president in a televised showdown in the Oval Office.
It would also follow days of acrimony between the White House and Ukraine’s leadership over the contours of a possible peace deal with Russia.
Mr. Zelensky rejected a White House proposal made public this week that would have the United States recognize Russia’s control over the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally annexed in 2014. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Zelensky of being “inflammatory” and said his refusal to concede to White House demands would “prolong the killing field.”
Despite the rancor, there still appears to be some room for concessions between Washington and Kyiv, though their positions are hardly set in stone.
What Moscow would accept remains unclear.
Ukraine’s latest proposal makes no demand, for instance, that Ukraine’s membership in NATO — vehemently opposed by Moscow — be guaranteed, though this has long been a position held by Mr. Zelensky. Instead, it says: “Ukraine’s accession to NATO depends on consensus among the Alliance’s members.”
In talks in London and Paris, American officials reiterated Mr. Trump’s intention to oppose NATO membership for Ukraine, but they told their Ukrainian counterparts that this position would not bind future American presidents if any have a different stance.
“The next U.S. administration could decide to let Ukraine into NATO,” the Americans told the Ukrainians, according to a person at the meeting in Paris last week. U.S. officials said they understood that Ukraine would not accept any limitations on ever joining NATO.
And the White House has taken Ukraine’s side, not Russia’s, when it comes to the future shape of Ukraine’s military. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine’s military, now the largest and most battle-hardened in Europe besides Russia’s own, be subject to strict limitations on its size and capabilities. Trump administration officials have told the Ukrainians that they would not support such limitations.
And while Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance expressed readiness this week to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, the Americans repeatedly made clear to the Ukrainians that they would not require Kyiv to do so, nor would they expect the Europeans to follow the American lead.
Still, despite an assertion by Mr. Trump that “we’re pretty close” to a deal, there appears to be a long way to go. While all sides agree that before any serious peace negotiation can begin the Russians and the Ukrainians have to stop shooting at each other, a cease-fire appears to be as elusive as ever.
Hours after Mr. Trump lambasted Mr. Zelensky for failing to support the White House peace proposal this week, Russia launched an attack on Kyiv that killed at least 12 people and injured 90 others. That attack prompted a rare rebuke of Mr. Putin from Mr. Trump, though similar attacks, including one that hit the eastern city of Sumy on Palm Sunday, killing 34, have yielded minimal American response.
Russia has refused to abide by a 30-day cease-fire, which the Trump administration demanded and Ukraine agreed to. Even a one-day truce proposed by Mr. Putin to mark Easter did not hold, with both sides accusing the other of continuing to fight.
Then there is the issue of territory.
Since Mr. Putin’s invasion in February 2022, Russian troops have occupied a significant percentage of Ukraine’s territory, predominantly in the country’s eastern Donbas region, but also a strip of land in the south linking Russian territory to Crimea. The Kremlin has ruled out giving up any of that territory, which includes large portions of four Ukrainian provinces that Mr. Putin has decreed are now part of Russia.
In their proposal, the Ukrainians say their country should be “fully restored,” without specifying what that would mean. Though Mr. Zelensky has long said his administration’s ultimate goal is the return of all territories that made up Ukraine when it declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, including Crimea, Kyiv’s latest proposal seems to be intentionally vague on this point.
“Territorial issues could be discussed after the full and unconditional cease-fire,” is all the Ukrainian proposal says.
Trump administration officials have described as unrealistic Mr. Zelensky’s goal of pushing Russian forces out of all of these occupied territories; the American proposal would accept de facto Russian control over these occupied areas. Ukraine and its European partners say that would amount to rewarding Russian aggression.
While this would be a painful concession for the Ukrainians, the Trump administration has so far refused to acquiesce to all of Russia’s territorial demands. The White House, for instance, has declined to go along with a Russian demand that Ukraine retreat from the entirety of the four Ukrainian provinces Mr. Putin has declared part of Russia.
One participant in the talks said the White House position was that this was “an unreasonable and unachievable demand that the United States would not support.”
This week, Mr. Vance said that the United States would walk away from the talks if both sides did not agree to a “freeze” of the territorial lines as they now stand.
U.S. officials later explained that although the total amount of territory controlled by Russia was unlikely to change in any future negotiations, Ukrainian officials have made clear that they intended to propose territorial swaps to improve the country’s defensive positions. Trump administration officials have privately assured the Ukrainians that they would fight for the swaps, but said they could not guarantee that Russia would go along with them.