The US and Ukraine said on Sunday they had drafted an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war with Russia, hours after European countries proposed their own radical alternative that omitted some of the pro-Russia points made in an original US-backed document that was leaked last week.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, emerged from a meeting in Switzerland late on Sunday with a Ukrainian delegation led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, saying he was “very optimistic” about the progress of the talks. A joint statement between the two countries shared that any eventual deal would “fully uphold” Ukraine’s sovereignty.
The original 28-point US document leaked last week demands Ukraine hand over territory to Russia, limits the size of its army and agrees not to pursue the Kremlin for alleged war crimes.
As discussions start in Geneva (Switzerland) on Sunday, Donald Trump said Ukraine had shown “zero gratitude” for US efforts to end the conflict. In a conciliatory response, Zelenskyy said he was personally grateful to the US president for the military assistance Washington had given, starting with Javelin missiles, which had saved Ukrainian lives.
Trump’s hostile rhetoric came after a confusing weekend in which Rubio admitted the White House plan was conceived in Moscow, only to then insist the US was its author.
Having been frustrated by Us’s initiative, Ukraine’s European allies drafted their own Kyiv-friendly plan on Sunday. It says negotiations over territory should take place after a ceasefire is agreed and should start from the line of contact – the existing frontline.
It says both parties would agree how any truce would be monitored “under US supervision”. Unlike the White House text, the European draft does not call for Kyiv to withdraw from cities it controls in eastern Donbas. Nor does it rule out Ukraine’s membership of Nato, but points out there is no consensus over its membership.
There are further eye-catching proposals. They include that Russia give the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which would split power 50-50 between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukraine’s army would be capped during peacetime at 800,000 soldiers, 200,000 more than in the US draft.
Frozen Russian assets would also be used to reconstruct Ukraine, rather than being partly given to US investors. If Moscow were to respect a “sustainable peace”, sanctions imposed since 2014 would be gradually eased and Russia would be brought back into the G8.
European leaders at the G20 summit in Johannesburg (South Africa) hinted on Saturday that the White House’s peace formula needed “additional work”. Poland’s president, Donald Tusk, expressed reservations on Sunday, saying: “It would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”
The document was drafted by Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s envoy, together with Trump’s special representative, Steve Witkoff. Speculation based on the use of language in the plan suggests it may have been written in Russian and later translated into English.
A group of US senators said Rubio told them the text was not an American one. It was, they said, a Russian document deliberately leaked by Moscow which the US then passed on to Ukraine. Rubio later insisted the US did author the proposal, with input from Russia and Ukraine.
Amid a backlash from some Republican senators, Trump rowed back from his earlier demand that Zelenskyy sign off on the deal by Thursday. Speaking in Washington, the US president said it was “not my final offer”, opening the door to significant changes.
Rubio and Witkoff arrived in Geneva together on Sunday with the US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, who held talks with Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week.
After the talks, Rubio said good progress had been made in addressing unresolved questions in the draft US plan. “I think we made a tremendous amount of progress,” he told reporters at the US mission in Geneva, adding: “We’ve really moved forward, so I feel very optimistic that we’re going to get there in a very reasonable period of time, very soon.”
Yermak also said earlier that the sides had made “very good progress”, and were “moving forward to the just and lasting peace Ukrainian people deserve”.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday evening it was good that there had been “dialogue with US representatives”, adding there were “signals that Trump’s team hears us”.
Meanwhile, Russian forces staged a big drone strike on Sunday on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing four people and injuring several others, officials said. Fifteen strikes were recorded in six areas of the city in north-eastern Ukraine.
A Kyiv negotiating team had earlier spoken to officials from France, Germany and the UK.
European officials have been scathing about the US draft in private conversations. They say it undermines Ukraine’s sovereignty and sets conditions for its EU accession. It would set a dangerous global precedent if accepted, they said. It also rules out a French- and British-led peacekeeping force for Ukraine and limits where Nato aircraft could be based.
One official said Putin was trying to turn back the clock 30 years on Europe’s security architecture and enforce demands made shortly before his all-out invasion. Russia’s president called for Nato’s military forces to withdraw to their 1997 borders, before the Baltic states and central Europe joined the transatlantic alliance.
The European counter-proposal will be welcomed by Zelenskyy, who has come under enormous pressure to bend to US demands. He said last week that his country faced an impossible choice between betraying national interests and losing a major ally in the shape of Washington. “The bloodshed must be stopped, and we must ensure that the war is never reignited,” he wrote on Sunday.
