From the front lines in the east to a missile-scarred city in the west, many Ukrainians on Friday used one word to dismiss a U.S.-Russian peace plan floated by the Trump administration: capitulation.
The 28-point plan would require Kyiv to surrender significant territory, reduce the size of its military and relinquish some weapons, according to officials familiar with the proposal. While the White House has cautioned that the proposal is still in “flux,” its contours reflect maximalist demands made by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia throughout the war that Ukraine has consistently rejected.
That helps explain the widespread Ukrainian response, summed up neatly by a banner headline on the homepage of the Kyiv Independent newspaper. It read “New U.S. peace plan pushes Ukraine toward capitulation” — a galling prospect despite widespread exhaustion and heavy losses from nearly four years of bitter fighting against the Russian invasion.
In western Ukraine, the city of Ternopil was reeling from a Russian missile strike on Wednesday that killed at least 31 people. Many there were deeply skeptical — and in some cases angry — about the proposal and who stood to gain from it.
Iryna Urezchenko, 66, has a close friend and colleague who is still missing more than two days after the strike. Rescuers were still searching under gray, wet skies for up to 10 bodies believed to be buried under rubble of a badly damaged apartment building.
“It is horrific,” she said. “This peace plan means that we are fighting for nothing, giving our lives for nothing.”
Viacheslav Nehoda, the head of Ternopil’s regional military administration, stood near the still-smoking wreckage and held up his phone to display photos of some of the victims, asking, “Is this the kind of plan that’s needed?”
“I have no words, because this is a proposal to capitulate to an enemy that is destroying civilians, that is killing people,” he said.
While Ukrainians are significantly more open to a negotiated settlement than they were at the war’s start, this proposal grated. That it was drafted without input from Kyiv or its European allies was particularly unpalatable to some Ukrainians, who echoed European leaders in saying a settlement without having a seat at the negotiating table was a nonstarter.
Viktor Alekseev, a reserve officer in Kyiv, said he was “alarmed” by parts of the proposal — namely its reference to a blanket amnesty for any crimes committed during the war. The draft also spells out a reduction of Western aid and the abandonment of Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO, longstanding Russian demands that he called “the next step toward the same war” with an enemy that rarely follows the rules.
“I don’t even want to think about returning territories,” said Avi, a drone pilot in Ukraine’s military who asked to be identified by his military call sign. And Russia? “They don’t adhere to agreements,” he added.
Ukraine has bitter experience of security assurances collapsing when put to the test. As a draft of the proposal circulated online, Ukrainians invoked the Budapest Memorandum — a pledge signed in 1994 that was meant to protect the country after it gained independence.
Under that accord, Ukraine turned its former Soviet nuclear weapons over to Russia , in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and Britain. But those guarantees clearly failed — evidenced by Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, first in 2014 and later with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
“Sadly, I know history all too well. I remember the Budapest Memorandum,” said Leonid Komsky, 61, on Friday afternoon in Kyiv, the capital. While “everyone is exhausted — both here and at the front,” he said, Ukrainians have no choice but to keep fighting.
“For Ukraine, this is a question of ‘to be or not to be.’ It is better to die standing than to die later as a slave,” he added.
Capt. Oleh Voitsekhovsky, who is fighting near the eastern city of Lyman, said he did not think Washington should go from acting as the world’s policeman to being a “global broker — one that demands compensation for security guarantees and turns international relations into pure transactionism.”
“Neither Ukraine, nor Russia, nor the U.S. will ultimately be satisfied with this plan,” he said in a message.
The Kremlin has deflected questions about whether it supports the proposal, which was presented to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Thursday by a visiting U.S. military delegation.
The plan is the latest in a string of Trump-led efforts to restart stalled negotiations, a point noted by Olena Hrosovska, 52, an art curator in Kyiv.
“These proposals are nothing new; they keep popping up. The goal remains the same: to weaken Ukraine and fulfill Putin’s wish list,” she said Friday.
But Ms. Hrosovska acknowledged that Ukraine is vulnerable at the moment, grappling with a government corruption scandal, losses on the battlefield and persistent Russian airstrikes that have battered the country’s energy grid as winter descends.
“That is why the people trying to push this through think they can finally force our hand,” she explained. “I hope they are wrong.”
Maria Varenikova, Oleksandr Chubko and Cassandra Vinograd reported from Kyiv, Ukraine; and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn and Kim Barker from Ternopil, Ukraine.
Maria Varenikova covers Ukraine and its war with Russia.
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