German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the latest peace plan draft for Ukraine has been presented to US President Donald Trump – including a proposal on territorial concessions Kyiv may be prepared to make.
But Merz highlighted the territorial issue was “a question that must be answered primarily by the Ukrainian president, and the Ukrainian people.”
“We also made this clear to President Trump,” Merz pointed out.
In recent weeks European leaders have worked closely with Ukraine to come up with a new iteration of a peace plan that addresses Kyiv’s interests and concerns.
Trump appears to have grown frustrated with the intricacies of the question of sovereignty over Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.
Because his negotiating team has previously worked closely with Moscow, Kyiv’s European allies fear the US president might eventually seek to impose a Russian-led solution on Ukraine.
“It would be a mistake to force the Ukrainian president into a peace that his people will not accept after four years of suffering and death,” Merz said in a joint news conference with Nato chief Mark Rutte.
He added that in Wednesday’s “constructive” phone call with Trump, he, France’s Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had “made it clear” that Europeans needed to have their interests heard too.
For his part, Trump said the participants had “discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words” and added that he was yet to decide whether to attend a meeting in Europe. “We don’t want to be wasting time,” he said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has long signalled he would be prepared to talk to Trump directly to discuss the sticking points of a deal, but the US president has suggested all issues had to be ironed out before such a meeting could take place.
The territorial question is one of the thorniest. Russia demands that Ukraine withdraws entirely from the parts of the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions which it still holds – something Kyiv refuses to do, both on principle and because it fears it would allow Moscow a foothold for future invasions.
“We have no legal right to [cede territory], under Ukrainian law, our constitution and international law,” Zelensky said earlier this week. “And we don’t have any moral right either.”
Zelensky is set to hold more talks with his allies today as he co-chairs a coalition of the willing call alongside Merz, Macron and Starmer.
As high-level, frantic diplomatic activity of the last few weeks has taken place among US, European and Ukrainian officials, with frequent statements from all sides, Moscow has remained remarkably tight-lipped.
Any comments from Russia have sought to cement the impression that Moscow and Washington are aligned on their hopes for the terms of a peace deal.
On Thursday Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Trump for trying to broker a deal and said the recent meeting between Vladimir Putin and US envoy Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin had “eliminated” the “misunderstandings” which had arisen since last summer’s Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.
At the time, Russia and the US agreed Ukraine should return to a non-aligned, neutral, and nuclear-free status, Lavrov stated.
The foreign minister also batted off suggestions that Kyiv could be given security guarantees in the form of foreign troops stationed in Ukraine.
“This is yet another return to the sad logic of Zelensky’s so-called peace formula,” Lavrov said, adding that Moscow had handed the US “additional” proposals on collective security and that Russia was ready to give legal guarantees not to attack Nato or EU countries.
Yet Kyiv and its European allies believe that without security guarantees any peace settlement could be rendered meaningless.
But because Russia has previously violated ceasefire and truce deals, neither Ukraine nor Europe are likely to take any promise by Moscow at face value. In recent weeks European and Ukrainian officials have pushed for the US to be involved in guaranteeing that Kyiv doesn’t become the target of renewed attacks.
Earlier this week Zelensky said he was ready to hold elections if the US and European countries could guarantee Ukraine’s security during the vote. His five-year term as president was due to end in May 2024, but elections have been suspended in Ukraine since martial law was declared after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Not for the first time, Nato chief Mark Rutte said on Thursday that too many of the alliance’s allies did not feel the urgency of Russia’s threat in Europe.
“We are Russia’s next target,” he warned, adding that Nato had to make all efforts to prevent a war that could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured”.
