Useful information

Prime News delivers timely, accurate news and insights on global events, politics, business, and technology

The Ukrainian peace plan suggests concessions, but important obstacles remain

The leadership of Ukraine has written a counterproposal for a Trump administration plan that has received criticism for granting Russia too much. While the counteroffer deepens some of kyiv’s previous demands, it hints possible concessions on issues that have long been seen as intractable.

According to the Plan, which was obtained by the New York Times, there would be no restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian army, “a European security contingent” backed by the United States would be deployed in the Ukrainian territory to guarantee security, and frozen Russian assets would be used to repair damage to UKRAINE caused during the war.

These three provisions could be non -accessories for Kremlin, but parts of the Ukrainian plan suggest a search for common land. It is not mentioned, for example, of Ukraine that completely recovers the entire territory seized by Russia or an insistence on Ukraine that binds to NATO, two issues that President Volodymyr Zelensky has said for a long time were not prepared for negotiations.

Trump flew to Rome on Friday to attend the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday; Mr. Zelensky had also planned to do so, but his spokesman said Friday that this would depend on the situation in Ukraine, where Russian attacks this week in the capital, kyiv and other places have left dozens dead and wounds.

In a publication on social networks after landing in Rome, Trump said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to an agreement” and urged both parties to meet directly to “finish it.” Early in the day, he said it was possible that he and Mr. Zelensky could meet outside the funeral. A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if Mr. Zelensky goes to Rome, he could try to introduce Trump to the counterproposal of Ukraine personally.

“In the next few days, very significant meetings may take place, meetings that should approach silence for Ukraine,” said Mr. Zelensky on Friday in comments that were unusually optimistic compared to the tone of previous statements this week.

A meeting between the two leaders would be the first since the disastrous visit of Mr. Zelensky to the White House in February, when Trump and vice president JD Vance rebuked the Ukrainian president in a televised confrontation in the Oval office.

He would also follow days of acrimony between the White House and the leadership of Ukraine on the contours of a possible peace agreement with Russia.

Mr. Zelensky rejected a proposal from the White House made public this week that would make the United States recognize Russia’s control over the Crimean Peninsula, which the Kremlin illegally attached in 2014. On Wednesday, Trump accused Mr. Zelensky of being “inflammatory” and said that his denial to the White House demands “to prolong the field of killing.”

Despite the resentment, there seems to be a space for concessions between Washington and Kyiv, although their positions are barely in stone.

What Moscow would accept still without being clear.

The last proposal of Ukraine does not demand, for example, that the membership of Ukraine in NATO, with vehemence opposed by Moscow, is guaranteed, although for a long time this has been a position occupied by Mr. Zelensky. Instead, he says: “The adhesion of Ukraine to NATO depends on the consensus among the members of the Alliance.”

In conversations in London and Paris, US officials reiterated the intention of Mr. Trump to oppose the NATO membership for Ukraine, but they told their Ukrainian counterparts that this position would not unite the future US presidents if anyone has a different position.

“The next administration of the United States could decide to let Ukraine enter NATO,” Americans told the Ukrainians, according to a person at the Paris meeting last week. American officials said they understood that Ukraine would not accept any limitation to join NATO.

And the White House has taken the side of Ukraine, not from Russia, when it comes to the future form of the Ukraine army. The Kremlin has demanded that the Ukraine army, now the largest and endorsed by the battle in Europe, in addition to Russia’s own, are subject to strict limitations in their size and capacities. Trump administration officials have told Ukrainians that they would not support such limitations.

And although Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance expressed their preparation this week to recognize Russian sovereignty about Crimea, the Americans repeatedly made clear the Ukrainians who would not require kyiv to do it, nor would they expect Europeans to follow the US leadership.

Even so, despite Mr. Trump’s statement that “we are quite close” to an agreement, there seems to be a long way to go. While all parties agree that before any negotiation of severe peace can begin, the Russians and the Ukrainians have to stop shooting each other, a high fire seems to be as difficult as ever.

Hours after Trump criticized Mr. Zelensky for not supporting the White House’s peace proposal this week, Russia launched an attack against kyiv that killed at least 12 people and wounded another 90. That attack caused a rare repress They have given a minimal American response.

Russia has refused to fulfill a high 30 -day fire, which the Trump administration demanded and that Ukraine agreed. Even a one -day truce proposed by Mr. Putin for Mark Easter did not maintain, and both sides accused the other of continuing to fight.

Then there is the issue of the territory.

Since the invasion of Mr. Putin in February 2022, the Russian troops have occupied a significant percentage of the territory of Ukraine, predominantly in the eastern region of Donbas of the country, but also a strip of land in the south that unites the Russian territory with Crimea. The Kremlin has ruled out to renounce any of that territory, which includes large portions of four Ukrainian provinces that Mr. Putin has now decreed are part of Russia.

In their proposal, the Ukrainians say that their country should be “completely restored”, without specifying what that would mean. Although Zelensky has long said that the final objective of his administration is the return of all the territories that constituted Ukraine when he declared his independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, including Crimea, kyiv’s last proposal seems to be intentionally vague at this point.

“Territorial problems could be discussed after the high and unconditional fire,” says the entire Ukrainian proposal.

Trump administration officials have described as the unrealistic objective of Mr. Zelensky to get the Russian forces from all these occupied territories; The American proposal would accept de facto Russian control over these occupied areas. Ukraine and its European partners say that would be equivalent to rewarding Russian aggression.

While this would be a painful concession for the Ukrainians, the Trump administration has so far refused to accept all the territorial demands of Russia. The White House, for example, has refused to follow the Russian demand that Ukraine withdraw from all the four Ukrainian provinces that Mr. Putin has declared part of Russia.

A participant in the conversations said that the position of the White House was that this was “an unreasonable and unattainable demand that the United States would not support.”

This week, Mr. Vance said that the United States would move away from the conversations if both parties did not agree with a “freezing” of the territorial lines as they are now.

Later, US officials explained that although it was unlikely that the total amount of territory controlled by Russia would change in any future negotiation, Ukrainian officials have made it clear that they intended to propose territorial swaps to improve the country’s defensive positions. The Trump administration officials have privately assured Ukrainians who would fight for swaps, but said they could not guarantee that Russia accompanied them.

Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *