European leaders hope to strengthen peace plan in Ukraine’s favor ahead of U.S. talks

A US-led peace plan that reflects several key Russian demands has reverberated across Europe, with leaders expressing concerns that it could leave Ukraine vulnerable and calling for changes to the proposals.

European leaders and their key allies met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in South Africa and said in a joint statement that the plan requires additional work, adding that they are “concerned about the proposed limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attacks.”

The declaration was signed by the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Norway, as well as the Commission of the European Union and the Council of the EU. The leaders of Japan and Canada also signed the declaration, which warns that “borders must not be changed by force.”

President Donald Trump has set Thanksgiving as the deadline for Ukraine to agree to the 28-point framework, which suggests Russia could be granted more territory than it holds and would impose limits on Ukraine’s military and block kyiv from joining NATO – a demand long sought by Moscow.

The U.S. proposals include a security guarantee modeled on NATO’s Article 5, which would require the United States and its European allies to treat a future attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire transatlantic community, according to a U.S. official, although there are few details on what that would entail.

Top Ukrainian and American officials will meet in Switzerland to discuss “possible parameters for future peace,” Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, wrote on Telegram on Saturday. Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said Saturday that the delegation had been confirmed for the talks, which “will take place in the coming days.”

The White House described the plan as “the best win-win scenario, in which both sides gain more than they have to give,” saying the proposals were developed with input from Russia and Ukraine.

However, analysts say the plan could amount to a dangerous capitulation for Ukraine, which has previously rejected plans that would require recognition of Russia’s illegal annexations of the entire eastern Donetsk region and Crimea.

“Even if parts of this plan were to be imposed on Ukraine, it would be the end of Ukraine as we know it. It’s a real capitulation,” Michael Bociurkiw, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, who was in Johannesburg, told NBC News by telephone.

The United States is facilitating a “potentially disastrous capitulation for Ukraine,” said Keir Giles, a senior consultant at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.

“And now we will see a new panicked rush by European leaders to avoid an outcome that would be disastrous for their own security,” he said, adding that the European response to “repeated disastrous peace plans has been words, not deeds.”

“There should be nothing in Ukraine without Ukraine,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in an article on X on Friday, adding that European leaders would also meet in Angola next week.

Ukraine must have “a decisive voice in peace talks,” Polish President Karol Nawrocki said Friday evening on X. “The price of peace cannot under any circumstances be the achievement of strategic goals by the aggressor, and the aggressor was and remains the Russian Federation,” he added.

As European leaders mulled the project on the sidelines of the G20 summit, notably absent was Trump, who is boycotting the event over his baseless claims that South Africa’s white minority is the victim of hate crimes and land grabbing.

While Trump initially announced that Vice President JD Vance would attend, he later said no U.S. delegation would attend. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court warrant calling for his arrest, is also not present.

The extent to which Europe will actually be able to influence the plan without US involvement remains an open question, one that has implications both for Ukraine’s borders and for peace on the continent as a whole.

“They can’t influence that,” Bociurkiw said. “This makes NATO and Europe look weak, and Putin will continue to cause even more disruption.” »

“It’s like a high-speed train and you have Putin and Trump on board, then Zelensky on the departure platform and Europe stuck at the check-in counter,” he added.

Giles said the military aspects of the peace plan leave Ukraine defenseless against a future Russian attack.

“And since Ukraine constitutes the first line of Europe’s defense, this constitutes a potentially disastrous outcome for the continent as a whole,” Giles said.

Ukrainian lawmakers are also not particularly happy with the plan, with Victoria Podgorna of Zelensky’s political party saying it gives Russia “amnesty for launching a brutal war.”

Zelensky said Friday that he had spoken with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his German and French counterparts, adding that he would also speak to Washington to ensure that kyiv’s “principled positions are taken into account.”

“Ukraine could now face a very difficult choice, either lose its dignity, or risk losing a key partner, or the difficult 28 points, or a very difficult winter,” Zelensky said, warning his country of a “very difficult and turbulent” week ahead.

His warning also comes as Ukraine suffers battlefield setbacks and Zelensky tries to contain the fallout from a $100 million corruption scandal involving his top officials.

On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had captured two additional villages in eastern Ukraine, one in the Donetsk region and another in Zaporizhzhia.

Russia’s progress, both on the battlefield and in the proposed plan, prompted a positive response from the Kremlin, where Putin said it could “form the basis for a final peace settlement,” while adding that the topic had not been “substantially” discussed with Russia.

Meanwhile, two people were killed in Syzran in southern Russia in a Ukrainian strike on energy facilities, regional governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said on Russian state-backed messaging app Max on Saturday.