European leaders scramble to buy Ukraine time as US sets ceasefire deadline

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and leaders in France, Germany and across Europe are rushing to respond to US demands that Ukraine agree to the 28-point plan circulated this week by next Thursday

By Natalia Drozdiak, Samy Adghirni, Daryna Krasnolutska and Michael Nienaber

 

European leaders are desperately trying to buy Ukraine more time to work out a new ceasefire framework with Russia after the Trump administration imposed a Thanksgiving deadline, with top US officials hammering the point that this is turning into an ultimatum. 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and leaders in France, Germany and across Europe are rushing to respond to US demands that Ukraine agree to the 28-point plan circulated this week by next Thursday. Their approach, according to people familiar, is careful: how to essentially re-write much of the document but present it as constructive updates.

 

In a sign of the panic setting in, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rushed to pick up the phone to President Donald Trump to agree to more discussions in coming days at the level of national security advisers. That would normally mean the involvement of Marco Rubio, who holds that job as well as secretary of state, but the role could fall instead to Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Driscoll briefed European ambassadors earlier this week that a deal had to be done sooner rather than later, said the people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. He told the envoys that Ukraine was in a bad position and now was the time for peace, the people said. He added that President Trump wanted a peace deal now. 

 

The US president seemed to take a tough line when asked late Friday about the issue. If Ukraine doesn’t agree, he appeared ready to wash his hands of the conflict. As an enforcer of that message, Driscoll bluntly told them he was not there to negotiate on the details.

 

“He’ll have to like it — and if he doesn’t like it, then, you know, they should just keep fighting I guess,” Trump said, adding of Zelenskyy that “at some point he’s going to have to accept something.”

 

Yet Trump also indicated some flexibility with the timeline, saying in a Fox News Radio interview Friday morning that while he sees Nov. 27 as an appropriate point for a decision, “if things are working well, you tend to extend the deadlines.”

 

Attention will now shift to the sidelines of the G-20 in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Saturday, where European leaders will map out next steps, a person familiar with matter said earlier. 

 

“Europe has been trying really hard to come up with this solid and unified stance on this. And I think what this plan potentially does is throw all that effort to the wind and create a scenario where Europeans really have to go back to the drawing board,” said Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

 

Plan Details

The plan floated by US and Russian envoys would force Kyiv to cede large chunks of territory taken by Russia, cap the size of its military and see sanctions on Moscow lifted over time.

 

Under the plan, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News, the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk would be “recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States,” Ukraine would also be required to hold elections in 100 days, give up any hope of NATO membership and slash the size of its armed forces.

 

The US has threatened to cut all military and intelligence support to Ukraine if it doesn’t agree to a deal by next Thursday, the people said. 

 

But as the initial shock of the plan faded on Friday, some officials argued it was a repeat of the past when Trump put forward a demand, Zelenskyy and Europe resisted, and the US president backed off. 

 

One European official, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, said it’s not the first time Zelenskyy has found himself in a difficult spot with Trump. The official argued that new US sanctions are coming into force and while Ukraine is in a tough situation, it continues to strike targets deep in Russia and inflict heavy casualties on Russian forces.

 

Others are more pessimisitc and believe the very foundations of the transtatlantic alliance and security order are at stake.

 

“I find it very hard to believe that a proposal this far-reaching could be hammered out in a way that would be agreeable, not just to the Russians and Ukrainians but the Europeans in some fashion,” Meghan O’Sullivan, director of the Belfer Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, told Bloomberg Television. “I am a big believer in putting hard-core ideas on the table as a starting point, but expecting it could be resolved and these issues could be negotiated by Thursday seems inconceivable to me.”

 

Zelenskyy said in a social media post later Friday that he spoke with US Vice President JD Vance and Driscoll, who travelled to Kyiv to discuss the issue, for almost an hour. President Vladimir Putin also weighed in Friday, again accusing Kyiv of being the obstacle to peace and suggesting that it was the US and not Russia that had proposed the latest agreement.

 

Many details of the plan are proposals that have been rejected by Ukraine and its European allies in the past. NATO member states may also object, given that the plan would curtail the defense alliance’s ability to admit new applicants as it sees fit. Such a move would need the buy-in of all 32 of its members.

 

The plan entails Ukraine receiving a US security guarantee — albeit one that Washington would be compensated for. The US would also get 50 per cent of profits to rebuild and invest in Ukraine, and enter an economic partnership with Russia once sanctions are lifted.

 

Republican Objections

While European leaders scrambled, senior Republican members of Congress came out against the deal. 

 

“This so-called ‘peace plan’ has real problems, and I am highly skeptical it will achieve peace,” Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

 

“Ukraine should not be forced to give up its lands to one of the world’s most flagrant war criminals in Vladimir Putin,” Wicker said, adding that assurances provided to Russia’s leader “should not reward his malign behavior or undermine the security of the United States or allies.”

 

“Putin has spent the entire year trying to play President Trump for a fool,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, head of the Senate’s Defense Appropriations panel and the former Senate majority leader. “If Administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the President ought to find new advisors.”