Ukraine and US claim progress towards peace deal but divisions persist

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Ukraine, Germany, and the US claimed to have made progress on drafting a peace agreement to end Russia’s invasion, but admitted they remained divided over sensitive territorial issues and offered few details on how they would secure a ceasefire.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner had “clearly understood” Kyiv’s position after two days of talks on a US-led peace plan in Berlin.

Witkoff and Kushner stayed in Berlin for a dinner with Zelenskyy and the European leaders on Monday, where Trump was expected to address them by phone.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was hosting the talks in Berlin, said that the US had agreed to provide “substantial legal and material security guarantees from the USA and Europeans” to secure a ceasefire.

“This is a really far-reaching, substantive agreement that we have not had so far,” the German chancellor said. “In my opinion, providing similar security guarantees for Ukraine is a really big step forward . . . The American side has also committed itself politically and legally to do so.”

Neither the US or Ukraine, however, offered details on what the guarantees would entail or how they would work, even as one US official claimed they had “probably solved literally 90 per cent of the issues”.

Russia has already said that it would have “strong objections” to any Ukrainian and European input into the US plan and insisted its own demands be reflected in any security guarantees. But Trump believes he can convince Putin to accept the plan, the US official said.

Negotiators in Berlin discussed draft guarantees modelled after Article 5, Nato’s collective defence clause, as well as “really good safeguards” that would deter future aggression, said a second US official. They added that the offer of security guarantees “will not be on the table forever” without elaborating.

The US side has not indicated whether Washington’s role would be in providing the security guarantees.

“What’s on the table is really the platinum standard for what can be offered. It would have to go before the Senate [for ratification], and President Trump is willing to do that,” a US official said.

Trump has pushed Ukraine to quickly accept the US plan, initially drafted with Russian input, in the hope of agreeing a ceasefire by Christmas.

But Zelenskyy admitted the US and Ukraine remain divided on territorial concessions the Russian president has demanded from Kyiv as a condition to end his invasion. “At this stage, our positions differ,” Zelenskyy said. “The issue of territories is painful, because Russia wants what it wants,” he added.

US officials said they discussed creating an “economic free zone” with Zelenskyy in the industrial heartland of the Donbas on the frontline and gave him some “thought provoking ideas” about how to respond to Putin’s demands.

Russia has said it will not agree to any ceasefire until Ukraine withdraws its forces from the Donetsk region in the Donbas, where Kyiv currently controls about a third of the territory.

Ukraine has resisted any territorial concessions in the region, particularly the cities in the Donbas “fortress belt” that have helped repel Russia’s advances along the frontline.

The US said Ukrainian officials also met with a pro bono team from asset manager BlackRock over the weekend to discuss a “prosperity package” to rebuild the country.

But the US also wants to reintegrate Russia into the global economy so that it would have an incentive not to restart the war.

“There’s no such thing as permanent allies or permanent enemies,” a US official said.

With additional reporting by Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in Berlin