Kyiv and European allies prepare Russia peace plan to keep Trump onside

Ukraine and its European allies are preparing a peace deal plan that would keep the US onside in future negotiations with Russia, after mixed signals from the White House over US President Donald Trump’s willingness to endorse Moscow’s territorial demands.

On Tuesday national security advisers from European countries were discussing the details of the plan, ahead of a meeting of a “coalition of the willing” countries in London on Friday.

It would include a peace board to be chaired by Trump and modelled on the “board of peace” expected to oversee Gaza in the Israel-Hamas peace plan brokered by the US, two EU officials said.

Ukraine and its European allies are insisting, however, that talks to end the war should be based on the current frontline.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the leaders of nine countries, including France, the UK, Germany and Italy, said on Tuesday that, rather than Kyiv ceding any further territory to Moscow, “the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations”.

The statement was also signed by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

The Financial Times reported that, at a volatile meeting last week, Trump urged Zelenskyy to surrender the entire Donbas region. However, he later endorsed a freeze of the present territorial positions.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov rejected Trump’s idea of an immediate ceasefire on Tuesday, saying it contradicted understandings reached at a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August.

Washington and Moscow had been stepping up work on a planned summit in Budapest between Trump and Putin. But the White House confirmed on Tuesday that the summit had been cancelled. The decision to call off the summit came after US secretary of state Marco Rubio and the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone on Monday.

The frontline cuts through the Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, stretching more than 1,300km. Russian forces are making steady gains in the Donbas region, where Moscow controls 78 per cent of Donetsk oblast and 99 per cent of Luhansk, but only slivers of territory in the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Along with the Donbas, Putin claimed to have annexed Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in September 2022 and enshrined them in Russia’s constitution, despite controlling only 73 per cent of each. Neither Ukraine nor the international community recognises them as parts of Russia.

“Let it be cut the way it is. It’s cut up right now. I think 78 per cent of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now,” Trump told reporters on Sunday aboard Air Force One, referring to the Donetsk region. “They can negotiate something later on down the line. But I said cut and stop at the battle line. Go home. Stop fighting. Stop killing people.”

The statements from Ukraine and its allies added that their countries were also “developing measures to use the full value of Russia’s immobilised sovereign assets so that Ukraine has the resources it needs”.

EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday are expected to give their backing to using Russian state assets immobilised under sanctions for a €140bn “reparations loan” to Ukraine.

Belgium, where most of these assets are held, has demanded legal guarantees but is not expected to veto the plan, allowing the commission to make a proposal with an aim to getting an agreement by year’s end.

Part of the discussion among EU capitals is how the Russian cash should be used. Germany wants the funds to pay for military equipment, France is demanding a preference for European-made weapons, while Sweden and the Netherlands have asked to give Kyiv flexibility to decide on what to use the funds for.

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiha told EU foreign ministers on Monday that Kyiv would look to Europe first to procure what it cannot produce, but certain materiel such as Patriot missiles would need to be sourced from the US, according to two EU diplomats familiar with the meeting.

Additional reporting by Amy Kazmin in Rome