The US has shared a draft concept for monitoring a ceasefire in Ukraine with Ukrainian and European Union officials, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
According to the report, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented the draft proposal to Moscow, Kyiv, and EU officials, but he has not said further what it entails. The Kyiv Independent reported that the proposal was presented on Thursday during a long series of meetings hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron to push for European involvement in a ceasefire.
This comes as France announced a meeting in London next week with US, Ukrainian, and European officials to try to further peace talks.
Rubio said that he was open to attending the talks if he thought there would be advancements in negotiations, which have been stalling for weeks.
Russian representatives refuse to take any deal that does not address the "root causes" of the conflict, which began when President Vladimir Putin sanctioned an illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Territorial considerations
“We agree with the proposal to cease hostilities, but we have to bear in mind that this ceasefire must be aimed at a long-lasting peace, and it must look at the root causes of the crisis,” Putin said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has noted that the Kremlin believes that it is "not easy to agree on the key components of a settlement," backed by the US.
US officials have pushed several concessions to end the three-year-old war, some of which would see Ukraine giving up nearly 20% of its territory.
Bloomberg News reported early Saturday morning that the US was open to considering Crimea as part of Moscow's territory. The Ukrainian coastal region has been heavily contested between the two countries after Russia invaded and attempted to annex the area in 2014.
After US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin, he reportedly stressed to Trump that the easiest way to get a ceasefire between the two warring nations was to support a strategy that would give Russia ownership of the four eastern regions it attempted to annex illegally in 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has noted that he thinks that concessions like this are too biased towards the Kremlin's side.
“I think Mr. Witkoff has adopted the strategy of the Russian side,” Zelensky told Ukrainian reporters on Thursday. “I think it’s very dangerous because—knowingly or unknowingly, I don’t know—he’s spreading Russian narratives. In any case, it doesn’t help.”
However, the Wall Street Journal noted that the Ukrainian delegation said it would respect a potential ceasefire if Russia did.
After the Thursday talks in Paris, Rubio called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss the meeting.
“President Trump and the United States want this war to end, and have now presented to all parties the outlines of a durable and lasting peace,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said regarding the call.
Further, some US officials believe that a ceasefire deal is now "90%" completed regarding the Ukrainians, the New York Post reported on Friday, citing an unnamed source.
The unverified report said that the US intended to take the framework from Paris to the Russian side as a final offer.
US threats to abandon talks
Both the secretary of state and US President Donald Trump have threatened to walk away from the negotiating table if they believe either side is an obstacle to peace talks.
“So we need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks,” Rubio told reporters on Thursday. “If it is, we’re in. If it’s not, then we have other priorities to focus on.”
Trump emphasized that while he still thinks the war could be settled with his administration’s efforts, US officials would "take a pass" on trying to resolve the war.
“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people’ – and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “
But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”