The US has signalled that security guarantees will only be provided to Ukraine if it agrees to surrender territory in the Donbas to Russia, according to a report.
White House officials are said to have told Volodymyr Zelensky that the guarantees will only be given if a deal is agreed to give Moscow control of the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine – a red line for Kyiv.
Sources close to the discussions told the Financial Times that the Trump administration would provide additional weapons to strengthen Ukraine’s military in the event of a peace deal if Kyiv withdraws its forces from the region. Mr Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Ukraine will not give up any occupied land without first holding a referendum.
European and Ukrainian officials see Washington’s position as an attempt to place pressure on Kyiv to agree to a deal, with doubts raised over whether the White House is ready to make binding commitments on security.
US president Donald Trump has urged Ukraine to accept a peace deal (AP)
Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, told The Independent that the FT report was “totally false”.
“The United States’ only role in the peacemaking process is to bring both sides together to make a deal,” she said. “It’s a shame that the Financial Times is letting malicious actors lie anonymously in order to muck up the peace process, which is in a great place after this weekend’s historic trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi.”
The talks were held behind closed doors, and marked the first time that officials from the US, Russia and Ukraine had sat in the same room for discussions on peace since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022.
Officials involved in the talks told the Kyiv Post that both sides had held discussions on key issues, such as territory and the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant, that went beyond “maximalist” public statements by both sides.
President of the UAE Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan receives the heads of delegations participating in the UAE-hosted trilateral talks (via Reuters)
A US official told the newspaper that both sides were “testing how flexible each other’s red lines really are”. Talks will resume on Sunday.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said in an interview with European Pravda published on Tuesday that there had been a “qualitative change” in the peace talks, specifically in the participants from the Russian delegation.
“These are different people, and there were no more pseudohistorical lectures. The conversations were very focused,” he said.
Moscow’s delegation was previously headed by Vladimir Medinski, an aide to Vladimir Putin notorious for holding long historical discussions during the talks. It is now being led by General Igor Kostyukov, the director of Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.
