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WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s defense minister has told American officials that Kyiv is “90%” on board with President Trump’s peace framework presented in Paris this week by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the two special envoys dedicated to ending Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, a senior administration official told The Post Friday.
The question now is whether Moscow — which has been frustrating Trump’s attempts at hammering out a full cease-fire and peace agreement — will come onboard.
“This coming week in London, we want to make a determination for a full and comprehensive cease-fire,” the official said. “The intent then is to have [discussions] with the Russians and then say, ‘OK, this is your best and final offer,’ to find out where both sides are at.
“And once we get that, then the next steps will be determined,” they added, insisting that Trump is ready to walk away from the table without Moscow’s buy-in, placing responsibility for the conflict in the hands of America’s European allies.
Meanwhile, Kyiv defense chief Rustem Umerov and his colleagues will work through their remaining reservations about the peace plan, most of which surround where the lines would be drawn in a cease-fire that freezes hostilities.
“I think part of the concern they’ve got is on the land … just what they call ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto,’” the administration official said. “‘De facto’ mean we recognize the Russians occupy this land, but we don’t say [Ukraine is] going to give it up forever. ‘De jure’ means we acknowledge that [the Russians] take in this land and we’ll never see it back again.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country will never recognize Russian-occupied territories as belonging to Moscow.
However, Zelensky has signaled willingness to freeze the fighting along the current lines, which see Russia occupying about 20% of Ukraine’s territory.
To move Russia to the table, Special Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff may offer Moscow a “carrot” of reduced sanctions — and possibly the unfreezing of seized assets, the senior official said.
“The carrot, for the Russians, is a look at, ‘How do we reduce the sanctions that are currently on the Russians?’” they explained. “The other is, ‘How do you handle the frozen Russian assets — that $300 billion that sits in Brussels, what happens with those, as well?’”
But experts say that would run counter to Trump’s previous threats to ratchet up the financial pressure on Moscow — something he has so far failed to do.
“[Trump] has been very tough on the Ukrainians, cutting off intelligence support and military aid when he didn’t feel that he was getting the immediate ‘yes’ that he wanted from the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire,” the Atlantic Council’s Alex Plitsas said.
“The Russians have continued to violate any cease-fire that they have ever signed up for, refused to come to an agreement on the cease-fire on reasonable terms, continue to launch ballistic missile attacks and drone attacks and that are killing Ukrainian civilians.”
“All of that is basically thumbing their nose at President Trump and looking to embarrass him on the international stage because they are refusing to come to basic terms on a cease-fire, which is what he said that he would bring,” Plitsas added.
“A failure to be able to achieve the goal that he set out — of peace from Day One — and abandoning Ukraine to Russian aggression would be characterized as both a US and NATO loss across the board.”
The White House should instead crack down on Russian President Vladimir Putin who “has not been held accountable for his actions in a meaningful way for the last 25 years,” Plitsas went on.
“That’s the reason that we continue to see this behavior (from Russia,) so if we don’t change this behavior, we can expect to see more of the same from Putin, not less,” he said.
“I think the Ukrainians have shown that they’re committed to a peace process; they have already agreed to a cease-fire, and the folks that have not agreed are the Russians, and if that continues and the US cuts off aid or military support to Ukraine in the long run, it would put Russia in a position to conduct further aggressions into Ukraine and potentially seize more territory, which would be disastrous.”
