New Trump peace proposal for Ukraine could require land concessions and military reduction, source says
By Kevin Liptak, Natasha Bertrand, CNN
(CNN) — A new peace proposal for Ukraine drafted by the Trump administration could envision the country ceding the eastern Donbas region and limiting the size of its military in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, according to a Western official familiar with the ideas under discussion.
US officials said the plan was still being worked on, and that any final agreement would require concessions from both sides, not just Ukraine. Some of the points being circulated now – including some that appear weighted toward Moscow’s demands – are not final, officials said, and will almost certainly evolve.
The 28-point plan, which President Donald Trump has reviewed and supports, is the White House’s latest attempt to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to an end. Some of the proposal’s provisions — including territorial concessions in areas not currently held by Russia — have previously been nonstarters with the Ukrainians. But US officials see a new window of opportunity to restart peace discussions.
The plan is still in the framework stage, and its many points haven’t been finalized. CNN has not reviewed the proposal.
“President Trump has been clear since day one that he wants the war between Russia Ukraine to end, and he has grown frustrated with both sides for their refusal to commit to a peace agreement,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Nevertheless, the President and his team never gives up, and the United States has been working on a detailed and acceptable plan for both sides to stop the killing and create a durable, lasting peace.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested late Wednesday the document was a “list of potential ideas” rather than a completed proposal.
“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” he wrote in a post on X. “And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”
Still, some of the provisions being floated are likely to draw criticism from Ukraine and its backers since it would require significant land concessions. The two regions that form the Donbas, Luhansk and Donetsk, are still partially held by Ukraine.
In the other contested territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the current battle lines would be frozen, according to the Western official’s account of the ideas under discussion. Moscow has previously suggested Kyiv concede both of these regions in their entirety.
In one scenario, Ukraine would also be required to reduce the size of its military and roll back some of its military capabilities, including certain powerful weaponry it has received over the course of the war, the Western official said.
Other points under discussion include the status of the Russian language, and the Russian Orthodox Church, in Ukraine when the war ends.
The plan also includes US-backed security guarantees meant to ensure Russia cannot invade further or expand its war into Europe. The details were described by the Western official familiar with the document.
The proposal echoes a peace proposal from talks in Istanbul in the early weeks of the war in 2022, repeating some of Moscow’s wider geopolitical demands about Ukraine’s armed forces and allegiances.
Talks in Ukraine
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine on Thursday and delivered him the Trump administration’s proposed peace plan, a US defense official told CNN.
Driscoll and Zelensky discussed “a collaborative plan to achieve peace in Ukraine” and “agreed on an aggressive timeline for signature,” the defense official said. The official clarified that the US expected Zelensky to sign a framework with the US to work toward an eventual peace agreement, not sign onto a final peace deal itself.
It’s not clear how aggressive that timeline is, or whether Zelensky agreed to its points. European and Ukrainian officials told CNN on Wednesday that the plan appears to contain unacceptable and maximalist demands from Russia, including ceding territory in the eastern Donbas region that Russia does not even currently control.
But the Ukrainian presidential office said on X on Thursday that “the President of Ukraine has officially received from the American side a draft plan which, in the American side’s assessment, could help reinvigorate diplomacy.”
“The President of Ukraine outlined the fundamental principles that matter to our people, and following today’s meeting, the parties agreed to work on the plan’s provisions in a way that would bring about a just end to the war,” the Ukrainian presidential office said, adding that Zelensky expects to speak with Trump in the coming days.
Asked why the Army was tasked with delivering the peace plan rather than diplomats, the defense official said the Army “comes from a trusted position” with the Ukrainians, and is also in Ukraine to hold meetings on battlefield innovation — a topic Driscoll has been deeply involved in throughout his tenure as secretary.
“We come from a trusted position. The US Army is a proven Ukraine ally,” the official said.
‘Groundhog Day’
A European diplomat echoed the Western official’s description of some of the details of the proposal. The person told CNN that the new effort, which repeats many of Moscow’s maximalist demands dating back to 2022, reminded them of “Groundhog Day,” a film in which events repeat themselves over and over.
A European envoy based in Ukraine said the plan had caught the diplomatic community completely by surprise.
“This has all been gone through before and rejected, and now we’re back to square one,” the diplomat said. “For the Ukrainians, it is just a non-starter and with good reason. It would just be inviting the Russians to come back again at a future date. It would be political suicide for any Ukrainian leader (to accept it), and it would be military suicide to hand over that fortified area.”
The diplomat also described foreign ministries in Europe and elsewhere calling contacts in Washington for guidance on the plan only to be told they were equally in the dark.
“We have heard directly from people in the State Department and on Capitol Hill that nobody knew anything about this plan until it was leaked yesterday,” the diplomat said.
“People who should have known about it, knew nothing about it … There’s a lot of annoyance and confusion.”
In her first public comments since reports of the plan emerged, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, told reporters Thursday that “for any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board.” Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski, meanwhile, told CNN that any plans should involve Europe and leave Kyiv with the capacity to defend itself.
“We have a much bigger stake in this than the US, and therefore Ukraine, but also Europe, has to be involved,” he said.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been leading the effort, CNN reported on Wednesday, with a source saying the negotiations accelerated this week as the administration feels the Kremlin has signaled a renewed openness to a deal. A US official said Witkoff had been quietly working on the plan for a month, with input from both the Ukrainians and the Russians on the terms they could accept.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, reiterated its denial that it was working with the US on a peace proposal for Ukraine, saying Thursday there were “no new developments.”
“We have nothing new to add to what was said in Anchorage,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, referencing a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump in Alaska in August. “We have no new developments.”
CNN’s Andrew Carey, Nick Paton Walsh, Brian Abel, and Catherine Nicholls contributed to this report.
This headline and story have been updated with additional information.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
