Ukraine has agreed to the core terms of a U.S.-backed peace deal to end its war with Russia, but a final agreement still appears distant because of questions about whether Kyiv is willing to cede any of its territory to Moscow.
Details of the discussions between U.S. and Ukrainian delegations have not been revealed publicly. Both sides acknowledged that significant changes were made to the initial 28-point Trump administration peace plan during recent U.S.-Ukraine talks in Geneva. That initial plan generated backlash in the U.S. and across Europe among critics who said it was far too deferential to Russia and would all but guarantee further Russian military aggression against its neighbors.
President Trump struck an optimistic tone Tuesday. It seemed designed to put public pressure on Russia by signaling that a deal was close and that it was up to Russian President Vladimir Putin to take the next steps toward peace.
“I think we’re getting very close to a deal. We’ll find out,” Mr. Trump said during remarks at the White House.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X that there were a “few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out” during talks among the U.S., Ukraine and Russia.
U.S. Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll met with Russian officials Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, continuing Washington’s peace push and resuming direct, face-to-face American diplomatic engagement with the Kremlin.
The meeting began just hours after an overnight barrage of Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital that left at least seven dead.
The negotiators did not indicate after their meeting when representatives from all three nations would be in the same room together.
Mr. Trump said on Truth Social that special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with Mr. Putin in Moscow. Meanwhile, Mr. Driscoll will hold another round of talks with the Ukrainians.
Mr. Trump said he hopes to meet personally with Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Putin when the deal is nearing its “final stages.”
Mr. Zelenskyy indicated earlier this week that the most difficult question at the heart of peace talks, the matter of possible territorial concessions to Russia, can be decided only at the head-of-state level. Ukraine is pushing for a meeting between Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Trump in the U.S. over the next several days, although the certainty of that is unclear.
Amid the whirlwind of meetings and statements, there was some confusion about exactly what had been agreed upon after media reports of a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine.
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Ukrainian national security adviser Rustem Umerov trod carefully. He clarified on social media that Ukraine had not formally agreed to anything in the proposed deal, but that Kyiv and Washington had reached a “common understanding” on the revised deal discussed in Geneva over the weekend.
It’s unclear which pieces of the proposal have been changed or exactly which points Ukraine has agreed to and which points it objects to.
The initial plan called for territorial concessions to Russia of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, along with Crimea, which Russia has controlled for more than a decade. Russia would keep other chunks of Ukrainian territory as part of the deal, though it would have to pull its troops out of some currently occupied Ukrainian land.
The first draft of the proposal would ban the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine and effectively close the door on Ukrainian membership in the alliance. Ukraine would face significant restrictions on the size of its military, while Russia would gain relief from some economic sanctions.
Key European leaders said it was clear immediately that the plan needed to be amended.
“I welcome the continued efforts of the United States to end the war and stop the killing. The initial draft of the 28-point plan included points that were not acceptable,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told his Parliament on Tuesday. “There’s still a long way to go and a tough road ahead, but we’re more committed than ever to this cause and to keep pushing forward on this process.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow had not seen the latest version of the peace plan and expected that the Trump administration would share more information soon.
Mr. Lavrov said Russia’s evaluation of the U.S.-backed peace plan will be based on the “understandings reached at the Russia-U.S. meeting in Anchorage,” referring to Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin in Alaska in August.
“If there will be no spirit and letter of Anchorage on the key understandings that we have fixated, then it will be a different situation in principle,” Mr. Lavrov said.
Ukraine’s NATO status is also likely to be a roadblock. Russia has insisted that Ukraine’s desire to join the alliance was a primary reason for the invasion in February 2022. Kyiv has argued that it needs NATO membership for its own security.
The original draft of the 28-point plan, leaked to the press last week, included provisions that would reduce Ukraine’s military to just 600,000 personnel from its current 900,000 active personnel and eliminate Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.
Those were in line with Russia’s demands since it invaded Ukraine. In exchange, the U.S. and Europe would provide security guarantees to Kyiv, but the exact nature of these guarantees was not specified in the initial proposal.
Speculation about Russia’s involvement in drafting the deal intensified over the weekend when U.S. senators said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was leading the U.S. delegation meeting with Ukrainian officials in Geneva, told them Russia had authored the plan.
Mr. Rubio has since denied that the plan was written by Russia, but Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, reportedly played a major role in helping to craft it.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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