A Christmas tree is lit up in front of St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, 5 December 2025. Photo: EPA / Sergey Dolzhenko
US President Donald Trump’s envoys have given Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky until 25 December to accept a proposed peace deal that envisages Ukraine making significant territorial concessions to Russia, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Tuesday.
Citing officials briefed on the ongoing negotiations, the FT said Zelensky had told his European allies that he had been “pressed” to accept the peace deal swiftly during a two-hour call on Saturday with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, with Trump hoping to get a deal agreed “by Christmas”.
Zelensky, in turn, said he needed time to consult with Kyiv’s European allies before responding to Washington’s proposal. Though the text of the latest proposal has not been made public, it is believed to require major territorial concessions from Ukraine in exchange for unspecified US security guarantees.
One unnamed Western official told the FT that Kyiv was “stuck between demands on territory they can’t accept and a US side they can’t reject”.
Zelensky said on Monday that Kyiv’s negotiating team had managed to cut down Trump’s peace plan to end the war from 28 to 20 points after securing the removal of “openly non-pro-Ukrainian terms”.
However, the issue of territorial concessions remains a major point of contention in the ongoing negotiations, with Zelensky reiterating on Monday that his government had no legal or moral right to surrender Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of any peace deal despite reports of mounting White House pressure for him to do so.
Meanwhile, in an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday, Trump said that Zelensky had to “get on the ball and start accepting things … cause he’s losing.”
