Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's top security official denied on Friday he had agreed to the outline of a Trump administration peace plan, after US officials said he had accepted most of its terms.
Washington has presented Kiev with a 28-point plan that would endorse many of Russia's main demands, requiring Kiev to give up additional territory, cut back the size of its military and forever abandon hope of joining the NATO western alliance.
US officials said the plan was drafted after consultations with Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, who served as defence minister until July and is a close ally of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"This plan was drawn up immediately following discussions with one of the most senior members of President Zelenskyy's administration, Rustem Umerov, who agreed to the majority of the plan, after making several modifications, and presented it to President Zelenskyy," a senior US official said on Thursday.
But Umerov said on Friday he had not discussed the plan's terms, much less approved them.
"During my visit to the United States, my role was technical — organizing meetings and preparing the dialogue. I provided no assessments or, even more so, approvals of any points. This is not within my authority and does not correspond to the procedure," he wrote on Telegram.
Zelenskyy, who met a US Army delegation on Thursday, has acknowledged receiving the plan but has not commented directly on its contents.
"Our teams, Ukraine and the USA, will work on the points of the plan to end the war," the president wrote overnight on Telegram. "We are ready for constructive, honest and prompt work."
Kiev faces tough choices
The plan, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, includes terms that Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed as tantamount to surrender after their soldiers fended off a full-scale Russian invasion for nearly four years at huge cost.
It would require Ukraine to withdraw from territory it still controls in eastern provinces that Russia claims to have annexed, while Russia would give up smaller amounts of land it has captured in other regions.
Ukraine would be permanently barred from joining the NATO military alliance, and its armed forces would be capped at 600,000 troops. NATO would agree never to station troops there.
Sanctions against Russia would be gradually lifted, Moscow would be invited back into the G8 group of industrialised countries, and frozen Russian assets would be pooled in an investment fund, with Washington given some of the profits.
One of Ukraine's main demands, for enforceable security guarantees equivalent to the NATO alliance's mutual defence clause to deter Russia from attacking again, is dealt with in a single line with no details: "Ukraine will receive robust security guarantees".
European countries, who are now funding Ukraine's defence alone after Trump cancelled financial support from the United States, were excluded from drawing up the plan.
Trump, who returned to office this year vowing to quickly end the war, has reoriented US policy away from staunch support for Ukraine towards accepting some of Russia's justifications for its 2022 invasion of its neighbour.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a news briefing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US special envoy Steve Witkoff had been quietly working on the plan for about a month and that Trump supports the plan.
The acceleration in US diplomacy comes at an awkward time for Kiev, with its troops on the back foot on the battlefield and Zelenskyy's government undermined by a corruption scandal.
