US and Ukraine edge closer to joint plan to end war – with Moscow’s response uncertain

Washington and Kyiv have edged closer to a jointly agreed formula to end the war in Ukraine amid continuing uncertainty over Moscow’s response and a number of unresolved issues. Volodmyr Zelenskyy suggested the proposals put Ukraine in a stronger position, with Moscow facing the risk that the US will supply Kyiv with arms and further sanctions if Putin rejects the plan.Photograph: Anadolu/Getty People take cover in a metro station during a Russian drone attack in Kyiv on 23 December.Photograph: Dan Bashakov/AP Revealing the latest status of the peace talks, brokered by Washington, Ukraine’s president, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, appeared to have secured several important concessions from earlier versions of the now slimmed-down plan after intense talks with the US negotiating team. Regardless of whether it is accepted by Moscow, it marks a success for Kyiv in rewriting an earlier US draft that had been criticised as a Kremlin wishlist. Zelenskyy said he expected US negotiators to be in contact with the Kremlin on Wednesday. In the latest version of the peace plan, Ukraine accepts the principle of a demilitarised zone in its eastern regions, control of which has long been a stumbling block, with the insistence that Russia make a similar pullback of forces. Details of the proposal have been sent to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin , by his envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, and a Kremlin spokesperson said Moscow was formulating its response and would not immediately comment publicly. The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Dmitriev had briefed Putin on his recent trip to Miami for talks with Trump’s envoys. Peskov refused to be drawn on Russia’s reaction to the proposals, or the exact format of the documents, saying the Kremlin was not going to communicate via the media. “All the main parameters of the Russian position are well known to our colleagues from the United States,” Peskov told reporters. Putin has said in recent weeks that his conditions for peace are that Ukraine should cede about 5,000 sq km of Donbas, which it still controls, and that Kyiv should officially renounce its intention to join Nato’s military alliance. In the continuing complex choreography of negotiations, however, Ukraine will agree to several uncomfortable concessions. That includes a pullback of some Ukrainian troops from the area it controls on the eastern frontline, and giving up on its long-vaunted ambition for Nato membership in exchange for US-European security guarantees mirroring Nato’s Article 5 provision. It remained unclear, in public at least, what those security guarantees would look like. The latest plan also calls for the withdrawal of Russian forces from the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Sumy and Kharkiv, with international troops to be stationed along the contact line to monitor implementation. Zelenskyy presented the plan during a two-hour briefing with journalists, reading from a highlighted and annotated version. He suggested the proposals put Ukraine in a stronger position, with Moscow facing the risk that the US will supply Kyiv with substantially increased arms and escalating sanctions if Putin rejects the plan. Zelenskyy told reporters:...

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