The draft is based on the vision of US President Donald Trump, who last week called for an immediate freeze on the conflict along the current front lines.
“There has been enough bloodshed. It's time to go home and stop the killing,” he wrote on Truth Social. He expressed a similar sentiment to journalists aboard Air Force One—first a ceasefire, then negotiations over territory.
Trump also announced that he wanted to meet with Vladimir Putin in Budapest. However, preparations for the summit are stalling—negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have so far failed to reach an agreement on a preparatory meeting.
Moscow dampens expectations
In response to reactions from Europe, the Kremlin has dampened expectations of an early summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. According to spokesman Dmitry Peskov, no date has been set yet, and the negotiations require thorough preparation.
At the same time, diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire are intensifying – EU leaders have issued a statement strongly supporting an immediate cessation of fighting on the current front lines as a prerequisite for peace negotiations.
At Thursday's summit in Brussels, the EU will discuss a further package of sanctions against the Kremlin and the possibilities of using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine.
On Friday, the so-called “coalition of the willing,” a group of Kiev's allies coordinating further steps at the international level, is also scheduled to meet.
Summit meeting not taking place for the time being
Trump and his Russian counterpart Putin do not plan to meet “in the near future,” a senior White House official said on Tuesday.
The AP news agency reported, citing its source, that plans for a meeting between the two leaders had been put on hold for the time being.
According to an anonymous source in the Trump administration, the White House chief has “no plans to meet with President Putin in the near future.”
Ukraine must “not give Putin anything extra”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled his willingness to attend the planned summit in Budapest, despite his reservations about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's pro-Russian stance.
After returning from the US, he stated that the world was closer to a possible end to the war, even if peace was not yet certain. Zelensky praised Donald Trump's peace efforts, but emphasized that Ukraine was only willing to negotiate after a freeze on the front lines – without further concessions to Moscow.
According to information from the White House, Trump pushed for rapid acceptance of the agreement during the meeting, referring to Russia's strength, but without mentioning Ukraine's demands for defense or energy support.
In an interview with NBC, Trump emphasized that the front lines must remain unchanged if negotiations are to take place: “It is not possible to give Putin anything more,” he said.
Putin demands the entire Donbass
Ukraine's allies are concerned about the stance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, in their opinion, is not deviating from his maximum demands – most recently, he again demanded that Ukraine cede the entire eastern Donbass.
The area includes the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which Russia has been unable to bring fully under its control even after more than a decade of fighting. At the same time, there is disappointment over Donald Trump's change of heart – allies claim that after a conversation with Putin, he has moved away from his originally tougher stance toward Moscow.
However, it is unclear whether the Kremlin would be prepared to make territorial concessions elsewhere – because in addition to Donbass, Russia also occupies parts of the Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions and has also annexed Crimea since 2014.
At the same time, Russia has quietly sent the United States an unofficial diplomatic document (“non-paper”) reiterating its conditions for concluding a peace agreement with Ukraine.
According to two US officials, Moscow insists on gaining complete control over the entire Donbas region – which contradicts President Trump's proposal to freeze the conflict at the current front lines.
(bloomberg, reuters, tasr, ap, mja)
