{"id":303193,"date":"2025-11-20T12:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T12:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/303193\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T12:48:07","slug":"as-reports-of-a-us-russia-peace-plan-circulate-europeans-say-they-and-ukraine-must-be-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/303193\/","title":{"rendered":"As reports of a US-Russia peace plan circulate, Europeans say they and Ukraine must be involved"},"content":{"rendered":"

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine and Europe must be consulted on any efforts to end Russia\u2019s invasion<\/a> of its neighbor, top European diplomats said Thursday, as reports circulated about a U.S.-Russian proposal to end the war at a time when corruption allegations have rattled Ukraine\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

The plan, first reported by Axios, calls for major concessions from Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter, including granting Russia some of the major demands it has made since it launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor nearly four years ago. <\/p>\n

The talk of a secret peace plan piled more pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is also marshaling his country\u2019s defenses against Russia\u2019s bigger army<\/a>, visiting European leaders to ensure they continue their support for Ukraine<\/a>, and negotiating a major corruption scandal<\/a> involving the embattled energy sector that has caused public outrage. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board,\u201d EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at the start of a meeting in Brussels of the 27-nation bloc\u2019s foreign ministers.<\/p>\n

Representatives of EU countries agreed. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that \u201call negotiations about a ceasefire, regarding the further peaceful development of Ukraine, can only be discussed and negotiated with Ukraine. And Europe will have to be included.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t clear whether the foreign ministers had seen the peace plan, drawn up by U.S. and Russian envoys, and which was said to include forcing Ukraine to cede territory, a prospect Zelenskyy has ruled out. <\/p>\n

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller declined to comment on Wednesday on reports about the proposal but underscored Trump wants \u201cto reach a settlement in the Ukraine-Russia war, so that we can have peace in Europe and we can end the killing and the slaughter of so many innocents.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s diplomatic efforts<\/a> this year to stop the fighting have so far come to nothing.<\/p>\n

Several high-ranking Army officials<\/a>, including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, were in Kyiv on Thursday to give a new push to peace efforts and assess the reality on the ground in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.<\/p>\n

The proposal, which could still be changed, calls in part for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and to abandon certain weaponry, according to the person who had been briefed on the contours of the plan but was not authorized to comment publicly. It would also include the rollback of some critical U.S. military assistance. Russia, as part of the proposal, would be given effective control of the entire eastern Donbas region \u2014 an area Moscow has long sought \u2014 even though Ukraine is still in control of part of it.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, have been key to drafting the proposal, according to the person.<\/p>\n

A peace deal that requires Kyiv to hand over territory to Russia would not only be deeply unpopular with Ukrainians, it also would be illegal under Ukraine\u2019s constitution. Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out<\/a> such a possibility.<\/p>\n

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social platform X late Wednesday that American officials \u201care and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas\u201d for a lasting peace agreement which \u201cwill require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that there \u201cthere are no consultations per se currently underway\u201d with the U.S. on ending the war in Ukraine. \u201cThere are certainly contacts, but processes that could be called consultations are not underway,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

Danish Foreign Minister Lars L\u00f8kke Rasmussen said he didn\u2019t know whether the proposal had the blessing of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst and foremost, we have to find out whether it is really the big boys who (are) behind this plan or not,\u201d he said. \u201cI have listened to all the rumors (and) we have to really find out what is up and what is down.\u201d<\/p>\n

European leaders have already been alarmed this year by indications that Trump\u2019s administration might be sidelining them<\/a> and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in its push to stop the fighting.<\/p>\n

EU diplomats have accused Putin of being insincere in saying he wants peace but refusing to compromise in negotiations while sustaining Russia\u2019s grinding war of attrition in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Kallas, the EU\u2019s chief diplomat, chided Putin\u2019s forces for continuing to target civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, a day after a strike on the western city of Ternopil<\/a> killed 26 people and injured 93 others. About two dozen people were still missing.<\/p>\n

Kallas said that \u201cif Russia really wanted peace, it could have \u2026 agreed to (an) unconditional ceasefire already some time ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has stopped sending military aid directly to Ukraine, with European countries taking up the slack by buying weaponry for Ukraine from the United States. That has given Europe leverage in talks on ending the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe commend peace efforts, but Europe is the main supporter of Ukraine and it\u2019s, of course, Europe\u2019s security that\u2019s at stake. So we expect to be consulted,\u201d said Polish Foreign Minister Rados\u0142aw Sikorski.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Madhani reported from Washington. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine and Europe must be consulted on any efforts to end Russia\u2019s invasion of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[157608,23,966,793,3,111,963,21,19,22,20,25,24,800,965],"class_list":["post-303193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-157608","tag-america","tag-article","tag-general-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}