Nick Schifrin:
Amna, as you said, U.S. and Ukrainian officials met today in a pivotal meeting in London, on the U.S. side represented by special envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled at the last minute.
A U.S. and European official tell me that Ukraine and Europe proposed a counterproposal to the U.S. plan that they say is this. Ukraine would give up the right to reseize all occupied territory with its military. Ukraine would not join NATO. The U.S. would legally recognize Russian control of Crimea, but Ukraine would not have to.
The U.S. would also lift sanctions on Russia. Europe would provide Ukraine security guarantees. And then there are the territorial concessions, which we will go over with a map.
Russia currently occupies about 18 percent of Ukraine. You see it there in pink. Under the U.S. plan, the lines would essentially freeze. So Russia would get to keep the territory it currently occupies. You see that in red, in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk, but it would have to give back some territory in blue up in Kharkiv up in the north.
It would also have to give back the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which you see in Southern Ukraine over there, that it currently occupies. Now, that counterproposal that I mentioned, U.S. — I’m sorry — Ukraine and European officials said that Ukraine would have — there would have to be a cease-fire on the ground agreed to by Russia.
And there have — and Ukraine would have to get long-term security guarantees before there could be any conversation about all of those other items, all of those other concessions. It is not clear how the White House will respond to that, but Vice President J.D. Vance said today that the U.S. did want to freeze the war on its current lines and he reiterated the U.S. could walk away.
J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States: We have issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process. The current line, somewhere close to them is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict.