President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that a compromise peace plan backed by the United States still called for Ukraine to withdraw from the eastern Donbas region, a concession that Mr. Zelensky said his country would not make.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky made clear that territorial questions remained a major unresolved issue, a day after Ukrainian and European leaders sent to the United States a counterproposal to end the war. Security guarantees to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine again after any halt in the fighting are another primary issue still under negotiation.
Mr. Zelensky said that under the American vision, the territory in the Donbas that Ukraine still holds would become what the Trump administration calls a “free economic zone” where no Ukrainian or Russian troops would be present. At the same time, Russia would be free to keep troops in the parts of the Donbas it has seized from Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader said the Americans had left uncertain who would govern the “free economic zone” after a Ukrainian withdrawal. He added that it would be unfair for Ukraine to be forced to leave the Donbas while Russia, which invaded in 2022, could stay.
“When you talk to us about a compromise,” Mr. Zelensky said about the American peace plan, “you must offer a fair compromise.”
Mr. Zelensky said that Russia had agreed to give up small amounts of territory that it holds in the Dnipro, Kharkiv and Sumy regions of Ukraine. Russia would freeze the lines in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, where it has also seized territory, he said.
Ukraine has called for freezing the entirety of the front line, including in the Donbas, in the event of a cease-fire. Mr. Zelensky said on Thursday that any eventual decision to cede territory would have to be presented to voters in the form of elections or a referendum. Such a vote could be held only if the fighting stopped and security could be guaranteed, Ukraine has said.
The Ukrainian leader said on social media that Ukrainian and American officials had held an “in-depth conversation” on Thursday about security guarantees. Earlier this week, Mr. Zelensky said that the United States had discussed the potential for legally binding guarantees that would be approved by Congress.
Ukraine has been pressing hard for concrete security guarantees from the United States and Europe, saying that without those it cannot agree to a deal to end the war. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine cede vast territory, shrink its military and stay out of the NATO alliance, all of which Kyiv sees as leaving it vulnerable to renewed aggression.
Earlier on Thursday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said that Ukrainian and European leaders had sent the United States their own revised proposal to end the war. Kyiv and its allies are working to steer President Trump away from his insistence on a peace resolution that would favor Russia.
Mr. Merz, speaking in Berlin, said that the proposal was sent on Wednesday after a phone call between Mr. Trump and European leaders. That call included “pretty strong words,” according to Mr. Trump, who has shown frustration with the sluggish pace of peace negotiations.
Mr. Merz did not detail the contents of the revised proposal but said, “The main issue here is what territorial concessions Ukraine is prepared to make.”
“However, that is a question that must be answered primarily by the Ukrainian president and the Ukrainian people,” Mr. Merz told reporters after a meeting with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO. “We have also made that clear to President Trump.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain convened a video meeting on Thursday with Mr. Zelensky and officials from more than 25 nations that have pledged to support Ukraine after a peace deal is reached. In a statement, the British government said that Mr. Zelensky updated the governments on continued Russian attacks, and the group discussed what they called progress toward using frozen Russian assets to help finance Ukraine’s war effort.
“They all agreed this is a pivotal moment for Ukraine, its people, and for the security we all share across the Euro-Atlantic region,” the British statement said.
But a flurry of recent diplomatic negotiations have failed to produce any breakthroughs to end the war, and Mr. Trump has expressed growing impatience.
“We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday after his call with the European leaders, including Mr. Merz, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. Mr. Trump did not provide details about what those words were.
“I think we had some little disputes about people, and we’re going to see how it turns out,” he told reporters at the White House.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Merz said that European leaders wanted to meet this weekend with Mr. Zelensky and American officials, but that the prospects of that meeting depended on the U.S. response to the revised peace proposal.
“We don’t want to be wasting time,” Mr. Trump said. “Sometimes you have to let people fight it out.”
As it tried to negotiate peace on more favorable terms, Ukraine was also trying to secure long-term guarantees to deter future Russian aggression and a framework for economic cooperation to rebuild the country after the war, which started nearly four years ago when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Zelensky held talks with American officials and business leaders on Wednesday to discuss those rebuilding efforts. Attendees included the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent; Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who has been involved in negotiations to end the war; and Larry Fink, chief executive of the BlackRock investment firm, who has previously been tapped to help coordinate investment to rebuild Ukraine after the war.
In a video address after his talks with the American officials and Mr. Fink, Mr. Zelensky cautioned that reconstruction would become possible only once the country was secure.
“When there is security,” he said, “everything else follows.”
Ukraine faces an increasingly tough battlefield as Russia tries to strengthen its position in negotiations by mounting offensives along the entire front line.
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said on Thursday that Russia had no timeline for ending the war.
“Some say it would end by spring, some say during 2026 — we are not expending effort on this,” Mr. Lavrov said at a round-table discussion with ambassadors in Moscow.
Russia insists that all its demands be fulfilled before a cease-fire, including ones Ukraine deems unacceptable. The biggest sticking point is the Kremlin’s insistence that Ukraine cede all of the eastern region of the country, known as the Donbas.
Russian forces are close to capturing Pokrovsk, a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine where the two sides have been fighting since July 2024. The city is largely under Russian control, though Ukrainian forces still hold parts of it.
Overnight on Wednesday, Russia bombarded Ukraine’s infrastructure, according to the Ukrainian authorities — the latest in a series of attacks on the country’s energy grid — while Ukrainian forces carried out their own drone strikes.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that its forces had destroyed more than 280 Ukrainian drones, including 32 that were flying toward Moscow. All four airports serving the Russian capital had to halt flights for hours, causing major delays, Russian authorities said.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia, Lara Jakes from Rome, Ségolène Le Stradic from Paris and Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin.
Maria Varenikova covers Ukraine and its war with Russia.
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