Ukraine believes it has a narrow but significant chance to enlist US mediation to bring its war with Russia to a close — a timeframe President Volodymyr Zelensky says opens in December and runs through the end of summer 2027.
Mr Zelensky said he, alongside US and European officials, has put together a one-page set of suggestions intended for presentation to Moscow, aimed at ending a conflict that began when Russia invaded its neighbour four-and-a-half years ago.
Among the ideas, he said, are a ceasefire and a previously floated US proposal to establish a free economic zone in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, administered by a third party.
“It contains one of the ideas for a ceasefire – that is the main point. The second part concerns what the Americans proposed regarding a free economic zone,” Mr Zelensky told reporters in a weekend briefing.
The Kremlin on Tuesday cast doubt on whether such a free economic zone could work in Donbas, arguing the territory was formally part of Russia and suggesting that makes third-party administration improbable.
Russia has declared four Ukrainian regions to be part of Russia, despite not having full control over them. Moscow has repeatedly insisted that any settlement must include Ukraine fully ceding the four regions and addressing what it calls the conflict’s “root causes”.
Mr Zelensky said he viewed the diplomatic opening as limited — stretching from the G20 summit in the United States in December this year until the end of summer 2027.
After that, he said, the campaign for the 2028 US presidential election would dominate Washington’s political agenda.
Earlier this month Mr Zelensky said Ukraine had already provided the United States with proposals for ending the war, but he offered no further detail at the time.
Proposals address role of EU, NATO
President Zelensky waits for international guests at the Nordic-Baltic Eight summit in Kyiv on Sunday, which was followed by a Coalition of the Willing event yesterday
US-led peace efforts earlier this year collapsed as Ukraine rejected Russian demands for additional territory and as Washington’s focus increasingly shifted toward the conflict with Iran.
US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner last travelled to Moscow in January and have not yet been to Kyiv.
Mr Zelensky said a third component of the draft proposals deals with the part the European Union and NATO would play — and what “Ukraine is prepared to do to achieve this”. He did not elaborate.
“These three ideas I’ve mentioned are not exclusively Ukrainian ideas,” Mr Zelensky said, stressing they were developed with American and European partners and that some elements came out of earlier discussions US negotiators held separately with Ukraine and Russia.
Russia was prepared to hear new ideas on settling the war, a senior Russian diplomat said in an interview published last week, but any proposals should reflect the “realities on the ground”.
Moscow’s central objective remains taking the rest of Donbas, where it has been pressing forward toward Ukraine’s so-called fortress belt of eastern cities.
Russia condemns Finland
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, third from the left, along with other European leaders showing their solidarity with President Zelensky in Kyiv yesterday
The Kremlin on Tuesday criticised remarks by Finnish President Alexander Stubb in which he voiced approval of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, including attacks on e-commerce warehouses, saying his stance placed him in what it called the “party of war”.
Speaking at a news conference in Kyiv on Monday, Mr Stubb said Ukraine’s partners should help it broaden its ability to strike deep inside Russia. He argued that what he described as a “sensible military strategy” raises the cost of the war for Moscow and could convince ordinary Russians that it is time to end the conflict.
Responding to Mr Stubb’s comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they surprised Moscow and accused the Finnish leader — along with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham — of wanting the war to continue.
“This evokes no other reaction apart from surprise given that just a few weeks earlier the Finnish President had spoken of the need to normalise relations with Russia sooner or later. But now we see that escalatory rhetoric has prevailed after all,” Mr Peskov told reporters on a conference call.
“Mr Stubb is also a prominent representative of the ‘party of war’ alongside the British prime minister. They are deceiving their voters by claiming that it is possible to defeat Russia – it’s a huge deception – and they appear to be refusing to heed the realities on the ground,” Mr Peskov alleged without providing any evidence to support his claims.
Finland, a firm supporter of Kyiv, joined NATO in 2023 — a year after Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. The decision ended seven decades of military non-alignment and roughly doubled the length of the border NATO shares with Russia.
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Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met a Vatican envoy in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss possible paths toward peace.
Mr Lavrov said afterward that he and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher had agreed to work together on humanitarian issues, including the situation of children in the war zone.
