The U.S. is pressuring Zelensky to accept major territorial losses for Ukraine – Axios

The United States is pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept “major territorial losses and other concessions.”

This is reported by Axios, citing sources.

A Ukrainian official told the outlet that the U.S. proposal “got worse” after U.S. special representative Steven Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

During their two-hour conversation on Saturday, the Americans wanted to get a clear “yes” from Zelensky on the question of withdrawing troops from Donbas.

“It felt like the U.S. was trying in various ways to convince us that Russia wants to capture all of Donbas, and that the Americans wanted Zelensky to accept all this over a phone call,” the Ukrainian official said.

According to the Axios article, Zelensky did not directly refuse the Americans, but said he had not yet had time to study the updated U.S. plan in detail, since “he received it only an hour earlier and hadn’t read it yet” (recall that this is exactly what Trump criticized the Ukrainian president for).

A U.S. official called this “strange,” since, according to him, the U.S. had sent the updated proposal a day before Zelensky’s conversation with Witkoff. However, the Ukrainian source says that some of the documents arrived right on the eve of the call.

“The U.S. proposal included tougher conditions than previous versions on issues such as territory and control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and left key questions about security guarantees unanswered,” is how Ukrainian sources lay out their objections to the plan.

On security guarantees, the U.S. agreed to broaden their scope but, according to the outlet, refuses to have those guarantees ratified by the Senate, which Zelensky demanded yesterday.

The U.S. also reacted negatively to Zelensky’s trip to London.

“The Trump administration viewed Zelensky’s meeting on Downing Street as a pointless attempt to buy time in the negotiations over Trump’s peace plan,” Axios writes.

The White House considers the Europeans to be the main obstacle to a deal. Their advice to Zelensky to “show caution and patience” is causing irritation in Washington.

Earlier, Politico wrote that in the course of negotiations the U.S. is trying to persuade Ukraine to withdraw its troops from Donbas.