US, Ukraine Draft New 19-Point Peace Plan

A new version of a peace plan hammered out on between senior Washington and Kyiv delegations is proving more palatable to Ukrainians — and would remove several provisions that were previously described by US officials as “maximalist demands” by Moscow.

The new plan — said to include about 19 points — would nix one of the most controversial provisions of the 28-point plan reported last week — that Ukraine would have to give up territory in the Donbas that Russia has been unable to conquer in more than 11 years of war there, The Post reported.

Instead, the issue of territorial claims will be left to President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hammer out at a later date, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

It would also get rid of another sticking point in which Ukraine would have had to promise never to join NATO — a goal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has sought before invading the country in 2022.

Still, Zelensky in a Monday afternoon post to X said the new plan is not yet finalized.

“Now the list of necessary steps to end the war can become doable,” he wrote. “As of now, after Geneva, there are fewer points — no longer 28 — and many of the right elements have been taken into account in this framework.

“There is still work for all of us to do together to finalize the document, and we must do everything with dignity.”

He further predicted that Russia would try to “derail this opportunity for an agreement and to prolong the war.”

“We can see which interests are intertwined, and who is trying to weaken our position — Ukraine’s position — spreading disinformation, intimidating our people,” he said. “We are countering every such attempt to derail the end of the war.”

The White House had previously pushed for a peace deal signing by Thanksgiving — though Trump on Saturday said it was not a “final offer” kind of agreement.

As of Monday afternoon, there was no plan for Zelensky to come to the White House before the holiday, though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration feels “optimistic” about the updated version of the plan.

Asked Monday to confirm the details of the 19-point draft of the deal, the White House referred The Post to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments on Sunday stating that the agreement was “a living, breathing document” that has “evolved.”

“None of it is insurmountable,” Rubio added at the time. “The items that remain open are not insurmountable, we just need more time.”

The original 28-point plan began with the US trying to get Russia to put in writing what it wants to end the war — a “wish list” of what they would be willing to accept, multiple US and Ukrainian officials told The Post.

Prior to that plan, Washington was largely in the dark about Moscow’s demands to end its war as it dragged the White House through countless iterations of talks. Officials had complained for months about wanting Moscow to narrow down its list of what it would take to give up the war.

Other parts of the revised plan also vastly differ from the 28-point proposal in the wake of the Sunday talks involving Rubio.

Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya on Monday said both sides felt “positive” over the new plan, which also removes limits to the size of Ukraine’s army — and no longer gives blanket amnesty for war crimes committed during the Russian invasion, the Financial Times reported.

While the full details of the new document remain undisclosed, Kyslytsya insisted the latest plan bears little resemblance to the leaked 28-point deal that demanded Ukraine make heavy concessions while asking Russia to barely give up anything.

“Very few things are left from the original version,” Kyslytsya told the outlet of the new plan. “We developed a solid body of convergence, and a few things we can compromise on.”

The original version sought to shrink Ukraine’s armed forces more than two million active and reserve personnel to just 600,000, with Kyiv also asked to cede its entire Donbas region, which Russia has failed to conquer for more than a decade.

The deal also called on Ukraine to abandon any hope of joining NATO in exchange for vague security guarantees that would do little to stop Russia from launching a third invasion in the future.

After Sunday’s talks in Geneva between Ukrainian officials and Rubio, Kyslytsya said cutting Kyiv’s army “was no longer on the table.”

American and Ukrainian officials also agreed to remove a blanket amnesty for the war crimes committed during the conflict, with the new version now set to address “the grievances of those who suffered in the war,” according to the FT.

That provision was initially suggested by Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov to swap out for a line that would have forced Kyiv to conduct a “full audit of all aid received and create a legal mechanism to recover errors found and punish those who illegally profiteered from the war,” senior US officials told The Post last week.

It is unclear whether anyone in the Kyiv government directed Umerov to make the reported change to the 28-point plan, which he has since denied having done.

“Media reports about alleged ‘approvals’ or ‘removal of points’ have nothing to do with reality,” Umerov wrote in a post to X following The Post’s reporting. “These are examples of unverified information that arose outside the context of the consultations.”

But the new draft still leaves the other major issues to be discussed, including Russia’s territorial demands.

Such details would need to be directly discussed by Trump and Zelensky, Kyslytsya said, with Washington expected to reach out to Moscow in the coming days with the new proposal.

“It’s on the Russians to show if they are genuinely interested in peace or will find a thousand reasons not to engage,” Kyslytsya said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier Monday that the previous 28-point plan was something that could “form the basis for a final peace settlement” with Ukraine.

Russia has consistently painted the 28-point as a “starting point” for discussions, indicating that the Kremlin was not ready to sign on to the proposal.

Putin noted that the terms of that deal were in line with what he and Trump discussed in their summit in Alaska earlier this year, with Russia eager to discuss more at the negotiating table.

It remains to be seen how Moscow will respond to the updated version of the peace plan that includes the new input from Kyiv, especially given that the Kremlin was already poo-pooing the last plan before the Ukraine-US talks on Sunday.

Trump, who insisted that the 28-point peace plan was never a “final offer,” billed the talks in Geneva as positive, teasing that “something good just may be happening” as the administration works to broker peace.

The White House and Ukrainian government did not immediately confirm the details of the newest draft of the plan.