Ukrainian servicemen take part in tactical training at an undisclosed location in the Kharkiv region, northeastern Ukraine, 3 December 2025. Photo: EPA/SERGEY KOZLOV
Russia and Ukraine remain divided on “sensitive issues”, including control over eastern Ukraine and US security guarantees for Kyiv, as negotiations on a US-brokered peace deal between the two countries continue, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Bloomberg in a phone interview on Monday morning.
Zelensky said that no agreement on Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as Donbas, had yet been reached. “There are visions of the US, Russia and Ukraine — and we don’t have a unified view on Donbas,” he said, adding that Kyiv was also pushing for separate security guarantees from the West, and from the US in particular.
Zelensky’s comments followed US President Donald Trump saying he was “disappointed” that the Ukrainian leader had not read Washington’s peace proposal that he claimed Russia was ready to accept.
On Saturday, Zelensky hailed what he described as a “long and substantive” call to discuss the plan with Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom met with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last week.
However, Russia appears to have little appetite for peace, with senior Putin aide Yury Ushakov saying after the Witkoff meeting that “a lot of work” would still be needed if a peace deal were to be reached, and that Putin had not hidden Russia’s “critical, even negative, attitude towards a number of proposals”, without specifying which ones he was referring to.
The peace plan, cut down from the original 28 points to just 19, is believed to include several clauses Kyiv considers to be dealbreakers, including ceding Crimea and Donbas to Russia and amending its constitution to include a pledge not to seek NATO membership, as well as significantly reducing the size of its armed forces.
But even if Moscow and Kyiv manage to reach a compromise on territorial issues, Washington’s reluctance to provide Kyiv with security guarantees, which Trump reportedly views as an add-on to be discussed after the deal is signed, would be a major point of contention for Ukraine.
“There is one question I — and all Ukrainians — want to get an answer to,” Zelensky told Bloomberg. “If Russia again starts the war, what will our partners do?”
