‘Peace cannot be capitulation’

A US MILITARY delegation led by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll on Thursday delivered a new draft proposal to end the war in Ukraine, even as European and Ukrainian officials warned that any deal should not involve the country’s “capitulation”.

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UKRAINIAN rescuers on Friday carry the bodies of killed people that were found at the site of a heavily damaged residential building in Ternopil, amid the Russian-Ukraine war.

(AFP)

Kyiv’s main European partners said they should be included in any proposals for the future security of the continent, as European officials indicated they had not been consulted or even briefed on Washington’s plan, details of which have emerged in leaks to the press.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he discussed with the US military envoys on Thursday “options for achieving a genuine peace, the sequencing of work and formats for dialogue, as well as new momentum for diplomacy”.

“Our teams — from Ukraine and the United States — will work on the points of the plan to end the war. We are ready for constructive, honest and swift work,” he said. His office added that he would speak in the coming days with US President Donald Trump about the “diplomatic opportunities and the key points required to achieve peace”.

“We have witnessed today, I think, an absolutely remarkable pace of diplomatic activity, which is among the most ambitious I’ve seen in my career, genuinely,”

Ambassador Julie Davis, the chargé d’affaires at the US Embassy in Kyiv, said Thursday. “We spoke about President Trump’s vision for peace, including elements that are of critical importance to Ukrainians.”

A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Driscoll and Zelensky “agreed on an aggressive timeline” to move ahead, but declined to characterise the contents of the proposal.

Versions of a proposal, however, leaked earlier and prompted one of Zelensky’s advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, to slam it as amounting to no more than Ukraine’s “unconditional capitulation”.