The United States is reported to be preparing to recognise Russia’s control over Crimea and large parts of occupied eastern and southern Ukraine as part of a framework to end the war, in a move that has alarmed a number of European capitals.
According to reporting in The Telegraph, President Donald Trump has sent his special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to Moscow to present a revised version of Washington’s peace plan directly to Vladimir Putin.
Recognition at the centre of talks
The initial 28-point proposal, developed by Mr Witkoff after talks with Russian sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev in Miami in October, envisaged US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as well as of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in full, including areas not currently under Russian control. It also suggested freezing the front line in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as a de facto border.
The Kremlin has confirmed that it has received an updated document “setting out the parameters” of the US–Ukraine consultations and has linked any progress to formal recognition of Russia’s claims over Crimea and the Donbas. Putin has publicly described the legal status of these territories as a key point in talks over the US initiative.
In Geneva last weekend, Ukrainian and American officials are understood to have reworked the draft into a shorter 19-point plan that is less advantageous to Moscow but reportedly retains offers of some form of US recognition of Russian control over occupied areas.
Kyiv constrained by constitution
On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s then-chief of staff Andriy Yermak and national security adviser Rustem Umerov led the engagement with US negotiators. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly stressed that any concession of sovereign territory is barred by the constitution unless approved in a nationwide referendum, and that the presidential administration therefore cannot sign away land by decree or executive agreement.
Before his resignation on Friday following an anti-corruption raid on his home, Mr Yermak was quoted in Ukrainian and international media insisting that no “sane” official would agree to surrender territory, and that President Zelenskyy would not authorise such a step.
Mr Yermak and Mr Umerov had been expected to travel to Florida to continue discussions with US counterparts at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, but the timetable is now uncertain. The Ukrainian president has yet to announce when he might meet Mr Trump either in Washington or in Florida.
European partners voice concern
European governments have reacted with caution to indications that Washington is prepared to accept Russian territorial gains as the price of a ceasefire. After a meeting this week, leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine reiterated that borders should not be changed by force, describing this as a basic principle of European and international security.
A European counter-proposal to the original 28-point plan did not include any endorsement of Russian control over Ukrainian land. Instead, it suggested that questions of territory should be addressed only after a full and unconditional ceasefire.
If the US were formally to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the so-called “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk, it would mark a break with more than a decade of Western non-recognition policy since the 2014 seizure of the peninsula, and would make Washington the first major Western power to accord such status to the territories.
Envoy under scrutiny
The role of Mr Witkoff, a real estate investor turned special envoy for peace missions, has itself become a subject of debate. Leaked recordings, widely circulated in recent days, appear to show him advising a senior Russian official on how best to appeal to the White House and referring to Ukrainian withdrawal from Donetsk as part of a possible settlement.
Open-source intelligence specialists have suggested that a European security service may have been behind the disclosure, which has added to tensions between Washington and some European partners already uneasy about the direction of the peace initiative.
White House urges caution over reports
The White House has acknowledged “robust discussions” with both Russian and Ukrainian counterparts but has played down detailed media accounts of the evolving plan. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that reporting on such sensitive talks should be treated as speculative unless it comes directly from the president or his national security team.
Nonetheless, a range of publicly available drafts and summaries – from the original 28-point Miami document to the subsequent Geneva revisions and the European counter-proposal – indicate that recognition of at least some Russian territorial claims remains at the centre of the emerging framework.
For Kyiv and its European supporters, the central question is whether any settlement that accommodates Russia’s annexations can be reconciled with Ukraine’s constitutional constraints and with wider commitments to the principle that frontiers cannot be redrawn through armed force. How Washington chooses to answer that question will shape not only the outcome of the war, but also future assumptions about security guarantees and treaty obligations on the European continent.
