The U.S. and Ukraine drafted a new 19-point peace plan Monday — a striking turn from President Trump’s controversial 28-point proposal, which sparked a weekend uproar for its heavy tilt toward Moscow, according to reports.
Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya said both sides felt “positive” about the new outline. Gone are the restrictions on Ukraine’s army. Gone, too, is the blanket amnesty for war crimes.
The Financial Times reported the sense in the room: this was no longer a plan written with Russia’s pen.
The full document remains unseen. But Kyslytsya was careful — and confident. The new proposal, he said, bears little resemblance to the earlier version that asked Ukraine to bow and Russia to barely bend.
“Very few things are left from the original version,” he told the outlet. “We developed a solid body of convergence, and a few things we can compromise on.”
The discarded draft had tried to shrink Ukraine’s force from 900,000 soldiers to 600,000, and asked Kyiv to cede the entire Donbas region — territory Russia has tried and failed to fully claim for more than a decade.
It also urged Ukraine to abandon any hope of joining NATO, leaving only loose security promises behind — promises that could wilt before a third Russian invasion.
But after Sunday’s talks in Geneva with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the deputy minister delivered the turn: cutting Kyiv’s army, he said, “was no longer on the table.”
Both American and Ukrainian officials also agreed to remove the blanket amnesty for those who committed war crimes, with the new version now meant to address “the grievances of those who suffered in the war,” according to the FT.
Still, the heart of the matter remains. Russia’s territorial claims. Russia’s insistence that Ukraine stay outside NATO. These questions, Kyslytsya said, will have to pass through the hands of Trump and Zelenskyy themselves. Washington is expected to make contact with Moscow in the coming days.
“It’s on the Russians to show if they are genuinely interested in peace or will find a thousand reasons not to engage,” he said.
