Ukraine’s Western backers will meet at the G20 summit in South Africa on Saturday to discuss how to adjust a White House peace proposal that Kyiv worries could force painful concessions, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said after talks with fellow European leaders.
The meeting comes as President Volodymyr Zelensky warns Ukraine is facing “one of the most difficult moments in our history” following leaks of the US proposal, which includes terms long rejected by Kyiv and widely viewed in Europe as favourable to Moscow. Neither President Donald Trump nor Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the summit.
Starmer, who spoke with Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday, said allies were united behind securing a “lasting peace once and for all” and would work to “strengthen” the plan during G20 talks.
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Details circulating in Washington and European capitals indicate the US plan would require Ukraine to give up territory in the east, scale back its military and commit to staying out of NATO. Kyiv would also have to withdraw from parts of the Donetsk region that it still controls, handing Russia de facto control over Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.
Washington has been pushing Kyiv to accept the outline and dispatched senior Pentagon officials to Ukraine earlier in the week, according to US media reports.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the draft terms marked a “very dangerous moment,” warning that “Russia has no legal right whatsoever to any concessions from the country it invaded.” She added that the shape of any settlement “is for Ukraine to decide,” according to Reuters.
In a ten-minute address filmed outside the presidential office, Zelensky said Ukraine expected “a lot of pressure… to weaken us, to divide us,” and vowed to work with the US and European partners to offer “alternatives” to the leaked plan.
Zelensky has struck a cautious tone as he navigates tensions with Trump, who criticised Kyiv earlier this year after a public dispute at the White House. On Friday, the Ukrainian leader acknowledged that his country “might face a very difficult choice: either losing dignity, or risk losing a key partner.”
Trump, speaking separately, warned that Ukraine could “lose more territory… in a short amount of time” and insisted that Zelensky “is going to have to approve” the plan. He said he had given Ukraine until Thursday, the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, to agree.
The leaked document says Ukraine would receive unspecified “reliable security guarantees” but would be expected to remain outside NATO, a long-standing Kremlin demand. In return, the proposal suggests Russia would refrain from invading its neighbours and that no new countries would join the alliance.
The draft also outlines a path for Russia to be brought back into global economic structures, including the lifting of sanctions and a possible return to the G7 — restoring it to the G8 for the first time since Moscow was expelled in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea.
Putin confirmed on Friday that the US had presented the plan, describing it as a potential “basis” for future talks. He added that Russia was prepared to “show flexibility” but was also ready to continue fighting along the front line, where Moscow’s forces have made slow gains despite significant losses.
