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Ukraine is preparing to present a revised peace plan to the White House, as it rules out making territorial concessions to Russia...
Kiev will propose alternative solutions to the US after President Volodymyr Zelensky again ruled out handing over the land, saying it "has no right" to do so under Ukrainian or international law.
The Ukrainian president made the comments during a meeting with European and NATO leaders on Monday, part of a joint effort to prevent U.S. support for a peace deal that includes significant concessions for Ukraine and that allies say would leave the country vulnerable to a future invasion.
Meanwhile, the city of Sumy in northwestern Ukraine was left without electricity overnight after a Russian drone attack. The regional governor said more than a dozen drones hit power infrastructure in the latest Russian attack overnight. No casualties were reported.
Zelensky's diplomatic tour of Europe comes after several days of intense talks between American and Ukrainian negotiators over the weekend, which failed to produce a workable plan that Kiev could agree to.
Zelensky was expected to be briefed on the private summit on Monday by his aide Rustem Umerov, who wrote on Telegram that he would give him full details of direct talks between the US and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
European leaders are walking a tightrope between supporting Ukraine and keeping the United States on their side. The Ukrainian president said at a news conference that his team could send a new proposal to the Americans as early as Tuesday, AFP news agency reported.
Regarding the issue of land surrender, Zelenskyy said that “Russia insists that we surrender territories, but we do not want to give up anything.” He added that “we have no legal right to do this, according to Ukrainian legislation, our constitution and international law. And we have no moral right.”
Zelensky has long argued that any changes to Ukraine's borders should be approved by a public referendum. He also told reporters that the original 28-point plan proposed by the United States and rejected by Kiev and European leaders as too favorable to Russia had been reduced to 20 points, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
He said that no pro-Ukrainian points had been removed from the draft and that there had been no "compromise" on the territorial issue. Zelensky cited control of the eastern Donbas region and the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant as among the "most sensitive" issues.
The initial US-backed plan proposed that Ukraine hand over full control of Donbas to Russia, despite the fact that Kremlin forces have failed to fully occupy it after nearly four years of war. The energy produced at Zaporizhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, would be shared between Russia and Ukraine, according to the draft.
Leaders in Kiev and across Europe have said progress has been made on that plan in recent weeks and have praised the Trump administration for trying to broker an end to the fighting. But Monday's hastily arranged summit at Downing Street, attended by Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, was widely seen as a show of support for Ukraine as it seeks to resist pressure from the White House.
The meeting agreed that the US-led talks represented a “critical moment” to strengthen support for Ukraine and reiterated calls for a “just and lasting peace that includes strong security guarantees.” The nature of these future security guarantees is another open issue in the negotiations.
Efforts are underway to form an international coalition, ready to provide continued military support to Kiev in the event of a peace agreement, although it is not yet clear what form this will take.
After talks in London, Zelensky flew to Brussels to meet with NATO chief Mark Rutte and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and today he is expected to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Moscow also claimed that talks with the White House were constructive, despite little public evidence that it has made progress on any of the goals the Kremlin set when it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
On Sunday, Trump indicated that he sees Zelensky as the main obstacle to securing a peace deal, something he has made a key foreign policy goal and which the president has argued he can achieve quickly during the 2024 presidential election campaign. He told reporters that Russia was "fine" with the peace plan the U.S. presented to both sides, but that he was "a little disappointed that President Zelensky hasn't read it." /Pamphlet/
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