Rescue workers put out a fire after a Russian strike on Ternopil, Ukraine on Wednesday. While the full peace plan is not published, points reportedly include capping the Ukrainian military at roughly half its current size.Rostyslav Kovalchuk/The Associated Press
The Ukrainian government was mulling its response Wednesday to a 28-point peace plan, described as heavily tilted in Moscow’s favour, that was drafted by U.S. and Russian officials without Kyiv’s involvement.
The chief architects of the new proposal are Steven Witkoff, the personal envoy of U.S. President Donald Trump, and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian businessman with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. A source in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said the plan was delivered to Mr. Zelensky only after Mr. Witkoff and the Russians agreed on it and that the White House was now urging Mr. Zelensky to accept it.
The early reaction from Kyiv was negative, as the plan is regarded as giving the Kremlin much of what it has sought since Mr. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago.
While the full 28 points have not been published, Axios and the Financial Times have reported that the document calls for Ukraine to concede the entire provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia – including key Donetsk cities such as Kramatorsk and Slovyansk that are still under Ukrainian control – and would see the Ukrainian military capped at roughly half its current size.
The U.S. has signaled to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Ukraine must accept a U.S.-drafted framework to end the war with Russia that proposes Kyiv giving up territory and some weapons, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Reuters
The Kremlin claims to have annexed all of Donetsk and Luhansk, a region collectively known as the Donbas, as well as the Ukrainian provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which are both also under partial Russian occupation. The proposal would reportedly freeze the front line in the latter two regions, and the U.S. would recognize Russia’s claims to the annexed territories – including Crimea, which Moscow seized in 2014 – though Kyiv would not be required to do the same.
The source said Kyiv was working to clarify whether Mr. Trump personally supported the 28-point plan in its current form, or whether the document was only a starting point for a new round of negotiations. The source said that the early signals were that the White House wants to pursue this framework.
Other key gains for Moscow, if the proposal were to become reality, include making Russian an official language of Ukraine, and reversing restrictions placed on the Russian Orthodox Church since the February 2022 start of the invasion.
The Ukrainian military would also be forced to give up certain categories of long-range weapons. Western troops would also be prevented from deploying to Ukraine as postwar peacekeepers.
Russian attack kills several in Ukraine as Zelensky arrives in Turkey for top-level talks
Canadian foundation helps Ukrainian soldiers get complex facial reconstruction surgery
The overall proposal is only positive for Russia, the source in Mr. Zelensky’s office said. The Globe and Mail is not naming the official since they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Mr. Zelensky was scheduled to meet with Mr. Witkoff in Turkey on Wednesday, but the meeting was cancelled shortly after reports of the 28-point plan first surfaced.
Mr. Trump’s approach to Ukraine has vacillated wildly over the past year. He came to office saying he could end the war in 24 hours, and initially sought to press Kyiv into capitulating by withholding U.S. military support and berating Mr. Zelensky in front of the television cameras during a February meeting in the White House. Mr. Trump later mused that Mr. Putin didn’t seem to be interested in making peace, and allowed NATO allies to purchase U.S.-made weapons on Ukraine’s behalf.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that “nothing new” had developed in Ukraine peace talks since an August summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin in Alaska. That meeting ended without agreement, and a follow-up summit that was expected to be held in Budapest before the end of 2025 was cancelled after a testy phone call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Kyiv residents sheltered from Russian drones and missiles attacking Ukraine on Wednesday morning. ‘Russia is once again attacking our energy infrastructure,’ Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. ‘Emergency power outages have been introduced in a number of regions of Ukraine.’
Reuters
The Witkoff-Dmitriev plan arrived at a time of weakness for Ukraine, both militarily and politically. Online photos and videos have shown Russian troops operating deeper and deeper inside Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub in the Donbas region, suggesting that a 15-month battle for the city is nearing an end. Capturing Pokrovsk would open the way for the Russian military to push north toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
An open-source map of the battlefield situation, produced by Deep State, a Ukrainian non-governmental organization, also shows Russian troops now control much of the city of Kupyansk, which sits astride a key railway junction 100 kilometres east of the country’s second-largest city, Kharkiv.
Meanwhile, a US$100-million corruption scandal in Ukraine’s energy sector has forced the resignation of two cabinet ministers. The key player in the alleged kickbacks scheme is a long-time friend and business partner of the President’s, leading to calls for Mr. Zelensky to shake up his office by dismissing his powerful chief-of-staff, Andriy Yermak.