KYIV, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Ukraine sees a window of opportunity for U.S. mediation to end Russia’s war in Ukraine until the end of next summer and has drafted one page of ideas with U.S. and European officials to be presented to Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
Zelenskiy said that a ceasefire and a previously discussed U.S. proposal for a free economic zone in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas area — to be administered by a third party — were among the ideas in the document.
“It contains one of the ideas for a ceasefire — that is the main point. The second part concerns what the Americans proposed regarding a free economic zone,” Zelenskiy told reporters in a weekend briefing.
KREMLIN QUESTIONS IDEA OF FREE ECONOMIC ZONE
The Kremlin on Tuesday questioned the feasibility of the U.S. idea to create a free economic zone in Donbas, saying the territory was formally part of Russia and that it was therefore unlikely that a third party could manage it.
Russia has claimed four Ukrainian regions as its own, despite not controlling them fully. Moscow has repeatedly said that any solution must involve Ukraine fully ceding the four regions as well as resolving the conflict’s “root causes.”
Zelenskiy said that he saw a window to end the nearly four-and-a-half years of fighting that stretched from the G20 summit in the U.S. in December this year until the end of summer 2027, given the looming campaign for the 2028 presidential election in the U.S.
Zelenskiy said earlier this month that Ukraine had handed proposals to U.S. negotiators for a plan to end the war, without providing more detail.
U.S.-led peace talks fell apart earlier this year as Ukraine refused Russian demands to cede more territory and as Washington became increasingly preoccupied with the conflict with Iran.
U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were last in Moscow in January and have not yet visited Kyiv.
PROPOSALS ADDRESS ROLE OF EU, NATO
Zelenskiy said the third element in the draft proposal was the role that the European Union and NATO would play and what “Ukraine is prepared to do to achieve this”. He did not elaborate further.
“These three ideas I’ve mentioned are not exclusively Ukrainian ideas,” Zelenskiy said, adding they were developed jointly with the Americans and the Europeans, with some stemming from previous talks U.S. negotiators had with Ukraine and Russia.
Russia was open to listening to new proposals on how to reach a settlement on the Ukraine conflict but they should reflect the “realities on the ground”, a senior Russian diplomat said in an interview published last week.
Moscow’s key objective is capturing the remainder of Donbas, where it has been making a push to advance into Ukraine’s so-called fortress belt of eastern cities.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk and Max Hunder in Kyiv; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Conor Humphries)
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