Europeans push back at US plan that would force concessions from Ukraine

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By Lili Bayer and Olena Harmash

BRUSSELS/KYIV (Reuters) -European countries pushed back on Thursday against a U.S.-backed peace plan for Ukraine that sources said would require Kyiv to give up more land and partially disarm, conditions long seen by Ukraine’s allies as tantamount to capitulation.

Two sources said Washington had signalled to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv must accept a U.S.-drafted framework to end the war, which includes territorial concessions and curbs to Ukraine’s armed forces. The sources spoke to Reuters on condition they were not identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The acceleration in U.S. diplomacy comes at an awkward time for Kyiv, with its troops on the back foot on the battlefield and Zelenskiy’s government undermined by a corruption scandal. Parliament fired two cabinet ministers on Wednesday.

Moscow played down any new U.S. initiative.

“Consultations are not currently underway. There are contacts, of course, but there is no process that could be called consultations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

He said Russia had nothing to add beyond the position President Vladimir Putin laid out at a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in August, adding that any peace deal must address the “root causes of the conflict”, a phrase Moscow has long used to refer to its demands.

‘PEACE CANNOT BE CAPITULATION,’ SAYS FRANCE

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels did not comment in much detail about a U.S. plan that has has not been made public, but indicated they would not accept demands for Kyiv to make punishing concessions.

“Ukrainians want peace – a just peace that respects everyone’s sovereignty, a durable peace that can’t be called into question by future aggression,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot. “But peace cannot be a capitulation.”

The White House has not commented on the reported proposals. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that Washington would “continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict”.

“…Achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions,” Rubio said.

A U.S. Army delegation, led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and the Army’s Chief of Staff Randy George, was in Kyiv and expected to meet Zelenskiy late on Thursday.

They met Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi late on Wednesday. Syrskyi said the best way to secure a just peace was to defend Ukraine’s airspace, extend its ability to strike deep into Russia and stabilise the front line.

WINTER APPROACHING

Russia has been pounding Ukrainian cities and infrastructure with nightly bombardments, killing civilians and causing power cuts as winter sets in. Authorities said 22 people were missing and 26 dead from airstrikes that destroyed an apartment block on Wednesday, one of the worst attacks in months.

In Ternopil in western Ukraine, far from the front, smoke was still rising from smouldering masonry as crews on cranes tried to make nearby buildings safe and uncover bodies. Toys, flowers and clothes were left in a small pile as a memorial to victims.

Ihor Cherepanskyi was searching for the body of his great-grandmother who lived on the sixth floor. He had run into the building to try to rescue her, but made it only as far as the fifth floor before the ceiling caved in.

“What kind of ‘strategic target’ is this?” he said.

Another Russian attack knocked out power for 400,000 Ukrainians. Ukraine said it had struck two Russian oil refineries.

With another winter approaching in Europe’s deadliest war in eight decades, Russian troops are poised to capture their first substantial city in nearly two years, the ruined eastern railway hub of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine said on Thursday it had received 1,000 bodies from Russia, and Russia said it had received 30 from Ukraine, in the latest swap of human remains from the battlefield.

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine and says it will fight on unless Ukraine cedes additional land, accepts permanent neutrality and cuts its armed forces. Ukraine says that would amount to capitulation and leave it unprotected should Russia attack again.

After the war’s early months when Ukraine fended off Russia’s assault on Kyiv and recaptured swathes of territory, the past three years have been an unrelenting grind along a 1,000-km (600-mile) front line, with huge losses on both sides.

A Ukrainian counterattack stalled in 2023. Since then Moscow has made slow progress, with the enemies separated across a charred no-man’s land, hunting each other’s forces with drones.

Trump, who returned to office this year vowing to swiftly end the war, has reoriented U.S. policy away from staunchly supporting Ukraine towards accepting some of Moscow’s justifications for its invasion.

But he has also shown impatience with Moscow, cancelling a summit with Putin last month and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two main oil companies. Friday is the deadline for foreign buyers to wind down Russian oil purchases.

(Reporting by Brussels and Kyiv newsrooms, Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by Gareth Jones and Timothy Heritage)