{"id":223445,"date":"2025-12-09T09:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/223445\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T09:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T09:41:08","slug":"volodymyr-zelenskiy-says-european-allies-close-to-finalising-revised-us-peace-plan-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/223445\/","title":{"rendered":"Volodymyr Zelenskiy says European allies close to finalising revised US peace plan \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u200bVolodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> has said Ukrainian, British and European officials are close to finalising a streamlined alternative to the US peace proposal<\/a> to end Russia\u2019s<\/a> war that includes security guarantees for the country.<\/p>\n

However, a crucial part of those guarantees remained undecided, he said, while \u2013 on the issue of territory \u2013 no compromise with Washington<\/a> had been reached, suggesting a peace deal was far off.<\/p>\n

\u201cA compromise has not yet been found\u201d with the Americans on territory, the Ukrainian president said after two hours of talks<\/a> at 10 Downing Street on Monday with UK prime minister Keir Starmer<\/a>, France\u2019s president Emmanuel Macron<\/a> and Germany\u2019s chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under Ukrainian and international law, he added: \u201cWe have no right to give anything away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy said progress had been made, though, with the original 28-point US peace plan. This had initially included several points which Ukraine would be unwilling to accept but was now reduced to 20 points, while earlier terms he described as unfavourable had been removed.<\/p>\n

The president said he expected Ukrainian and European national security advisers to have the revised plan ready around Tuesday evening to send back to the US for consideration.<\/p>\n

The main focus of Monday\u2019s talks, he said, had been around security guarantees for his war-weary country. Those guarantees from Europe, he said, were \u201cbasically ready\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, European allies had not said how they would guarantee Ukraine\u2019s security in the event of a renewed Russian invasion, he added.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy said the \u201cstrongest\u201d guarantees Ukraine could get would be from the US. If they were \u201clegally binding\u201d and voted through by the US Congress then Kyiv could be close to a deal, he suggested.<\/p>\n

He said the US side appeared open to going down that route.<\/p>\n

US president Donald Trump had suggested on Sunday that Zelenskiy was holding up a deal and had not even \u201cread\u201d the latest plan.<\/p>\n

In advance of the talks, Mr Merz had said he was \u201csceptical about some of the documents coming from the US side\u201d, adding: \u201cThis could be a decisive time for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Zelenskiy said the issue of Ukraine\u2019s economic recovery and reconstruction had also been discussed at length with his British and European counterparts earlier on Monday.<\/p>\n

European leaders used the meeting to raise the financial pressure on Moscow as they declared \u201cpositive progress\u201d in plans to use frozen Russian sovereign assets.<\/p>\n

Mr Starmer said Britain was prepared to join the EU in using these assets to backstop loans to Ukraine, as he warned the peace talks had reached a \u201ccritical stage\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Starmer wants \u2018hard-edged\u2019 guarantees for Ukraine yet the UK\u2019s armed forces are too bluntOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president who took part in a follow-up call, said: \u201cWe all know what is at stake and we know we don\u2019t have any more time to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said plans to use Russian sovereign assets for a \u201creparations loan\u201d to Ukraine would \u201cincrease the cost of war for Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

Downing Street said there had been \u201cpositive progress made to use immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine\u2019s reconstruction\u201d.<\/p>\n

British officials said the UK was also looking to use about \u00a38 billion (\u20ac9 billion) of frozen Russian sovereign assets it holds to support Ukraine and that Mr Starmer was working with partners in the EU on a joint response.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prime minister will update president Zelenskiy on our wider support,\u201d the officials had said before the meeting. \u201cThat includes through the use of the value of immobilised Russian sovereign assets. We hope to see movement on that soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the UK will not use about \u00a328 billion of assets from sanctioned Russian individuals that are frozen in the UK, only those belonging to the government in Moscow, said people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Bringing the Ukraine war to its endgame is going to mean messy compromisesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The British proposal is similar to Brussels\u2019 plan to use frozen Russian sovereign assets to backstop up to \u20ac210 billion in loans to Ukraine. British officials said the UK would \u201cnot go it alone\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Merz was expected to have updated his counterparts on Belgium\u2019s opposition to EU plans to use the frozen assets after meeting Bart De Wever, the Belgian prime minister. Mr De Wever will meet Mr Starmer in London on Friday.<\/p>\n

European leaders will debate the initiative on assets at a summit on December 18th-19th.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by James Politi in Washington \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200bVolodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukrainian, British and European officials are close to finalising a streamlined alternative to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,6586,2219,13,14,6622,6,5446,11,12,15,16,5,550,7,8,2264,107,2267,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-223445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-keir-starmer","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-russia","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-ukraine-crisis","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-world-news","30":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115688956409774146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}