KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top security official denied on Friday (Nov 21) he had agreed to the outline of a Trump administration peace plan, after US officials said he had accepted most of its terms.
Washington has presented Kyiv with a 28-point plan that would endorse many of Russia’s main demands, requiring Kyiv to give up additional territory, cut back the size of its military and forever abandon hope of joining the NATO western alliance.
US officials said the plan was drafted after consultations with Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, who served as defence minister until July and is a close ally of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“This plan was drawn up immediately following discussions with one of the most senior members of President Zelenskyy’s administration, Rustem Umerov, who agreed to the majority of the plan, after making several modifications, and presented it to President Zelenskyy,” a senior US official said on Thursday.
But Umerov said on Friday he had not discussed the plan’s terms, much less approved them.
“During my visit to the United States, my role was technical – organising meetings and preparing the dialogue. I provided no assessments or, even more so, approvals of any points. This is not within my authority and does not correspond to the procedure,” he wrote on Telegram.
ZELENSKYY: WE ARE READY FOR “CONSTRUCTIVE, HONEST” WORK
Zelenskyy, who met a US Army delegation on Thursday, has acknowledged receiving the plan but has not commented directly on its contents.
“Our teams – Ukraine and the USA – will work on the points of the plan to end the war,” the president wrote overnight on Telegram. “We are ready for constructive, honest and prompt work.”
The Kremlin, which has so far been cautious in public, said it had not yet been informed that Kyiv was prepared to negotiate over the plan.
RUSSIA’S DEMANDS SPELLED OUT, KYIV’S LEFT VAGUE
The plan, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, includes terms that Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed as tantamount to surrender after their soldiers fended off a full-scale Russian invasion for nearly four years at huge cost.
It would require Ukraine to withdraw from territory it still controls in eastern provinces that Russia claims to have annexed, while Russia would give up smaller amounts of land it has captured in other regions.
Ukraine would be permanently barred from joining the NATO military alliance, and its armed forces would be capped at 600,000 troops. NATO would agree never to station troops there.
Sanctions against Russia would be gradually lifted, Moscow would be invited back into the G8 group of industrialised countries, and frozen Russian assets would be pooled in an investment fund, with Washington given some of the profits.
But while the plan spells out many of the elements long sought by Russia in considerable detail, it also touches on some of Ukraine’s key aims, though mainly in vaguer terms.
One of Ukraine’s main demands, for enforceable security guarantees equivalent to the NATO alliance’s mutual defence clause to deter Russia from attacking again, is dealt with in a single line with no details: “Ukraine will receive robust security guarantees”.