Ukrainian peace plan hints at concessions, but major obstacles remain (2025)

Ukraine’s leadership has drafted a counterproposal to a Trump administration plan that has drawn criticism for conceding too much to Russia. While the counteroffer digs in on some of Ukraine’s earlier demands, it hints at possible concessions on issues that have long been seen as intractable.

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

Those three provisions could be nonstarters for the Kremlin, but parts of the Ukrainian plan suggest a search for common ground. There is no mention, for instance, of Ukraine fully regaining all the territory seized by Russia or an insistence on Ukraine joining NATO, two issues that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long said were not up for negotiation.

President Donald Trump flew to Rome on Friday to attend the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday; Zelenskyy had planned to as well, but his spokesperson said Friday that this would depend on the situation in Ukraine, where Russian attacks this week on the capital, Kyiv, and elsewhere have left dozens dead and wounded.

In a social media post after landing in Rome, Trump said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” and urged the two sides to meet directly to “finish it off.” Earlier in the day, he said it was possible he and Zelenskyy could meet on the sidelines of the funeral. A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Zelenskyy goes to Rome, he might try to present Trump with Ukraine’s counterproposal personally.

“In the coming days, very significant meetings may take place -- meetings that should bring us closer to silence for Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said Friday in remarks that were uncharacteristically optimistic when compared with the tone of previous statements this week.

A meeting between the two leaders would be the first since Zelenskyy’s disastrous visit to the White House in February, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated the Ukrainian president in a televised showdown in the Oval Office.

It would also follow days of acrimony between the White House and Ukraine’s leadership over the contours of a possible peace deal with Russia.

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

Despite the rancor, there still appears to be some room for concessions between Washington and Kyiv, though their positions are hardly set in stone.

What Moscow would accept remains unclear.

Ukraine’s latest proposal makes no demand, for instance, that Ukraine’s membership in NATO -- vehemently opposed by Russia -- be guaranteed, though this has long been a position held by Zelenskyy. Instead, it says: “Ukraine’s accession to NATO depends on consensus among the Alliance’s members.”

In talks in London and Paris, U.S. officials reiterated Trump’s intention to oppose NATO membership for Ukraine, but they told their Ukrainian counterparts that this position would not bind future U.S. presidents if any have a different stance.

“The next U.S. administration could decide to let Ukraine into NATO,” the Americans told the Ukrainians, according to a person at the meeting in Paris last week. U.S. officials said they understood that Ukraine would not accept any limitations on ever joining NATO.

And the White House has taken Ukraine’s side, not Russia’s, when it comes to the future shape of Ukraine’s military. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine’s military, now the largest and most battle-hardened in Europe besides Russia’s, be subject to strict limitations on its size and capabilities. Trump administration officials have told the Ukrainians that they would not support such limitations.

And while Trump and Vance expressed readiness this week to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, the Americans repeatedly made clear to the Ukrainians that they would not require Kyiv to do so, nor would they expect the Europeans to follow the American lead.

Still, despite an assertion by Trump that “we’re pretty close” to a deal, there appears to be a long way to go. While all sides agree that before any serious peace negotiation can begin, Russia and Ukraine have to stop shooting at each other, a ceasefire appears to be as elusive as ever.

Hours after Trump lambasted Zelenskyy for failing to support the White House peace proposal this week, Russia launched an attack on Kyiv that killed at least 12 people and injured 90 others. That attack prompted a rare rebuke of President Vladimir Putin from Trump, though similar attacks, including one that hit the eastern city of Sumy on Palm Sunday, killing 34, have yielded a minimal U.S. response.

Russia has refused to abide by a 30-day ceasefire, which the Trump administration demanded and Ukraine agreed to. Even a one-day truce proposed by Putin to mark Easter did not hold, with both sides accusing the other of continuing to fight.

Then there is the issue of territory.

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

In their proposal, the Ukrainians say their country should be “fully restored,” without specifying what that would mean. Though Zelenskyy has long said his administration’s ultimate goal is the return of all territories that made up Ukraine when it declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, including Crimea, Kyiv’s latest proposal seems to be intentionally vague on this point.

“Territorial issues could be discussed after the full and unconditional ceasefire,” is all the Ukrainian proposal says.

Trump administration officials have described as unrealistic Zelenskyy’s goal of pushing Russian forces out of all of these occupied territories; the U.S. proposal would accept de facto Russian control over these occupied areas. Ukraine and its European partners say that would amount to rewarding Russian aggression.

While this would be a painful concession for the Ukrainians, the Trump administration has so far refused to acquiesce to all of Russia’s territorial demands. The White House, for instance, has declined to go along with a Russian demand that Ukraine retreat from the entirety of the four Ukrainian provinces Putin has declared part of Russia.

One participant in the talks said the White House position was that this was “an unreasonable and unachievable demand that the United States would not support.”

This week, Vance said that the United States would walk away from the talks if both sides did not agree to a “freeze” of the territorial lines as they now stand.

U.S. officials later explained that although the total amount of territory controlled by Russia was unlikely to change in any future negotiations, Ukrainian officials have made clear that they intend to propose territorial swaps to improve the country’s defensive positions. Trump administration officials have privately assured the Ukrainians that they would fight for the swaps, but said they could not guarantee that Russia would go along with them.

Senior Russian general killed in car bomb explosion near Moscow

A senior Russian general has died in a car bomb attack in Moscow’s eastern suburb of Balashikha, Russian investigators and Kremlin authorities said on Friday.

The 59-year-old Lt. Gen. Moskalik, a member of the Russian General Staff, was killed when a nearby Volkswagen Golf exploded after an improvised explosive device was triggered, the country’s powerful Investigative Committee in Moscow said.

Moskalik had been involved in past negotiations to resolve the Ukraine conflict.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova drew a direct parallel to the war launched by Moscow, calling the explosion a “terrorist attack.”

“There is reason to believe that the Ukrainian secret services are involved in the murder,” Zakharova said.

“If the investigation confirms the Ukrainian connection in this case, it will once again demonstrate to the international community the barbaric and treacherous nature of the Kiev regime, which is seeking to escalate the military confrontation with Russia and irresponsibly ignoring constructive proposals for a peaceful resolution of the conflict,” she said.

Pro-Kremlin media reported that the last owner of the vehicle was a Ukrainian who had been granted Russian citizenship a few years ago.

High-ranking Russian military officers have been targeted by a number of attacks in Moscow following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In December, General Igor Kirillov was killed in a bomb blast in the city in an attack later claimed by Ukraine’s intelligence service.

The explosive device that killed the 54-year-old, one of the most high-profile figures behind the war in Ukraine, was placed in an electric scooter outside his home.

Investigators classified the explosion, in which Kirillov’s aide also died, as a terrorist attack.

Dpa contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2025

This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 8:32 PM.