By Gram Slattery, John O’Donnell and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Russia reiterated its previous terms for reaching a peace deal with Ukraine in a private communique sent to the U.S. over the weekend known as a “non paper,” according to two U.S. officials and a person familiar with the situation.
The communique reiterated Russia’s demand that it take control of all of Ukraine’s Donbas region, one of the U.S. officials said, a stance that effectively rejects Trump’s view that the frontlines should be frozen at their prevailing locations.
The White House and the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
News of the non paper – diplomatic speak for an informal document meant to communicate one party’s position to another – comes as a proposed summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest appears increasingly in doubt. A White House official told Reuters on Tuesday that there were no plans for that meeting “in the immediate future.”
Trump had a phone call with Putin on Thursday, after which he said the Budapest meeting would take place, possibly within the next two weeks.
At a private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, Reuters and other media outlets reported that U.S. officials pitched the Ukrainian leader on a Kremlin-proposed plan to give up the Donbas region in return for small parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Zelenskiy pushed back, and Trump thereafter said publicly the prevailing frontlines should be frozen.
Russia also reiterated its previous stance in the non paper that no NATO troops be deployed to Ukraine as part of any peace agreement, one of the officials said.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery and Jonathan Landay and John O’Donnell in Frankfurt; Editing by Don Durfee and Deepa Babington)
Comments