Ukraine may cede 20% of its territory to Russia in potential peace deal - NYT
Illustrative photo: Washington delegation at negotiations with Ukraine (Getty Images)
The Trump administration believes that Ukraine could allegedly "de facto" agree to hand over 20% of its territory to Russian invaders as part of a possible peace deal with Moscow, the New York Post reports.
Despite the fact that the terms of a potential peace/truce have not yet been determined, as Kyiv and Moscow are "internally discussing a plan," a senior official in the administration of US President Donald Trump told The Post that they could include the deployment of European forces in Ukraine if the war is stopped and a ceasefire is reached.
Trump's peace plan announcement
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that this week he would reveal the content of his proposed peace plan regarding Russia’s war against Ukraine. It may include the deployment of European troops on Ukrainian territory to enforce the proposed ceasefire.
Washington expects Kyiv and Moscow to respond to the peace deal after the American leader last Friday threatened to withdraw the US from ceasefire negotiations after months of discussions with both sides.
"I will be giving you a full detail over the next three days," Trump told reporters on April 21. "But we had very good meetings on Ukraine, Russia … We'll see how that works."
Issue of other countries' troops
"The hard part is what does a security force look like - we're calling that a 'resiliency force,'" the official told The Post.
The official added, "The resiliency force is part of the security guarantees that the Ukrainians want and we hope they get."
Also "on the table" are separate peacekeeping forces to monitor any ceasefire, which would look like a "joint commission" of Russians, Ukrainians, and a third country that is not a NATO member, overseeing the front line to ensure both sides putting their weapons down, The Post writes.
An American official told NYP that the US could also be involved - but not as ground forces, rather as a "monetary force, along with a third party."
Territory issue: Media 'insiders' on terms
The Wall Street Journal wrote on Sunday that the proposal might also include Washington's recognition of the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea as Russian territory.
The first Trump administration was against recognition of Crimea as supposedly under Russian sovereignty. Just like every other US President since the occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula by Russia in 2014.
"While The Post could not independently verify the report, a senior administration official on Friday said that Kyiv during talks with a US delegation last week was most concerned about the 'land' portion of the agreement, referencing the recognition of Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine as being Moscow's sovereign territory," the NYP article states.
An American official told Western media that Ukraine was seemingly "willing to give up 20% of its land" so long as it was considered a "de facto" recognition of the territory and not "de jure."
"'De facto' means we recognize the Russians occupy this land, but we don't say (Ukraine - ed.) is going to give it up forever," the official said. "'De jure' means we acknowledge that (the Russians - ed.) take in this land and we'll never see it back again," the US official told American journalists.
Talks about '90% agreement on the plan'
A senior official also said that Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov noted that Ukraine was "90%" aligned with the peace deal proposed by Washington, which they discussed last week in Paris with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the President's Special Envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg.
However, on Sunday, Umerov denied the source's claim to The Post, telling Sky News that the Ministry of Defense "doesn't make political decisions."
"We have several principled positions: we supported the US proposal for a full ceasefire back on March 11, while Russia did not support the US ceasefire proposal and continues daily strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Under these conditions, it is unclear how anyone could discuss or measure in 'percentages' the progress of any dialogue," Umerov said.
As Bloomberg recently reported, the US proposes to leave the occupied territories to Russia and "forget" about Ukraine joining NATO.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized that Ukraine is a sovereign state, and all its territories belong to it alone. Therefore, for Ukraine, it is unacceptable to recognize temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian for the sake of a peace deal.
