Under the terms of the outline agreement reported by various international media outlets, Ukraine would be forced to give up occupied territory in the east of the country, cut its military in half, and surrender some powerful weapons.
“For any peace plan to succeed, it has to be supported by Ukraine and it has to be supported by Europe,” Kallas told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. “The pressure must be on the aggressor, not on the victim. Rewarding aggression will only invite more of it.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told European ministers at a private meeting in Brussels that it was obvious Russia had dictated the terms of the new proposals. “The bottom line is that any peace plan is not doable if it is based on appeasement of the aggressor,” he said, according to a person directly familiar with his remarks. “This could only bring more war and brutality to Ukraine and all of Europe.”
The latest proposal comes at a precarious moment in the almost four-year-long conflict. Ukraine has suffered intensified bombardment and losses in recent days, while Moscow is due to be soon hit by the implementation of Trump’s sanctions on Russia’s biggest oil firms.
In Kyiv, a sprawling corruption scandal has engulfed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government and put him under pressure to overhaul his administration, just as European governments struggle to agree on measures to keep Ukraine supplied with weapons and cash.
Against that backdrop, reports emerged this week that U.S. officials, led by Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, had been in talks with Russian representatives to revive stalled efforts to broker a ceasefire.