Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has given details of an updated peace plan offering Russia the potential withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the east and the creation of a demilitarized zone in their place.
Detailing the 20-point plan agreed by American and Ukrainian envoys in Florida at the weekend, Zelensky said the Russians would respond once the Americans had spoken to them.
Describing the plan as “the main framework for ending the war”, he said it proposed security guarantees from the US, NATO and Europeans for a coordinated military response if Russia invaded Ukraine again.
On Ukraine’s eastern Donbas, Zelensky said a “free economic zone” was a potential option.
He told journalists that because Ukraine was opposed to a withdrawal, US negotiators were looking to establish a demilitarized or a free economic zone. Any area that Ukrainian troops pulled out of would have to be policed by Ukraine, he stressed.
“There are two options,” Zelensky said, “either the war continues, or something will have to be decided regarding all potential economic zones.”
The 20-point plan is viewed as an update of an original 28-point document, agreed by US envoy Steve Witkoff with the Russians several weeks ago, which was widely seen as heavily weighted towards the Kremlin’s maximalist demands.
The Russians have insisted that Ukraine pulls out of almost a quarter of its own territory in the eastern Donetsk region in return for a peace deal. The rest is already under Russian occupation.
Sensitive issues over territory would have to be resolved “at the leaders’ level”, but the new draft would provide Ukraine with strong security guarantees and a military strength of 800,000, Zelensky stressed.
Much of the updated plan resembles what came out of recent talks in Berlin involving US negotiators Witkoff and Jared Kushner with Ukrainian and European leaders. The setting then moved to Miami last weekend where US President Donald Trump’s team spoke separately to Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev and then Ukrainian and European officials.
There now appears to be far more detail on the territorial issue, although it is clear the Ukrainian side was unable to reach a consensus with the Americans.
Zelensky explained that if Ukraine was prepared to pull its heavy forces back in the 25% of Donetsk it still held to create an economic zone, making it virtually demilitarized, then Russia would have to do the same.
Russian troops are currently about 40km (25 miles) east of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, after they captured Siversk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to be in favor of the compromise proposed for Donetsk. He said this month that Russia would take control of the entire east of Ukraine by force if Ukrainian troops did not pull out.
However, US President Donald Trump is pushing to end almost four years of full-scale war and the Ukrainian president is calculating that Russia cannot afford to reject the US plan.
“They cannot tell President Trump, ‘look we’re against a peaceful settlement’,” Zelensky said. “If they try to obstruct everything, then President Trump would have to arm us heavily, while imposing all possible sanctions against them.”
Zelensky underlined that if a free economic zone were established in Donetsk it would need to be under Ukrainian administration and police and “definitely not the so-called Russian police”. The current front line would then become the boundary of the economic zone with international forces on the ground along the contact line to ensure no Russian infiltration.
Russia has so far rejected a European proposal to police any peace deal through a Coalition of the Willing as a “brazen threat”.
He emphasised that an economic zone would also have to be set up around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant currently occupied by Russia, and that Russian troops would have to pull out of four other Ukrainian regions – Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv.
There is no reference barring Ukraine from joining NATO, which was in the original 28-point plan and something Russia has consistently demanded.
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