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Updated November 25, 2025 at 3:53 p.m. ESTtoday at 3:53 p.m. EST 9 min/ Overnight; article contains a video: "Overnight Russian strikes killed several people in Kyiv on Nov. 25, after lengthy talks in Geneva brought the United States and Ukraine closer to a peace plan. (Video: Reuters)" By Siobhán O'Grady, Francesca Ebel and Catherine Belton; original article contains link to these authors KYIV — The White House is pressuring Ukraine to sign on to its new peace proposal by Thanksgiving or lose U.S. support in its war with Russia, according to five people familiar with the talks. U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll presented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday with a version of the 28-point plan President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff recently drafted with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev That plan, leaked to the news media and confirmed by several officials, includes several red lines for Ukraine, including a significant reduction of its army size and ceding territory to Russia that Moscow has not conquered militarily. Zelensky addressed Ukrainians on Friday and told them the nation is facing “one of the most difficult moments in our history” as the United States, which has been the country’s biggest ally, seeks to force it into a deal that would cement Russia’s gains. “Ukraine may face a very tough choice — either the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner,” Zelensky said. Although Trump has lessened direct aid to Ukraine, the U.S. has brokered deals for Ukraine to receive U.S. weapons through European partners and continues to share intelligence that is crucial to Ukraine’s survival on the battlefield. The U.S. is now sending “signals” that everything could be off the table if Kyiv does not quickly sign the proposal, two officials said, even as Driscoll took a lighter tone in Thursday’s meeting.AI Icon The two officials, like others quoted in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive diplomatic discussions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meets with U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll in Kyiv on Thursday. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office/AP) Speaking from the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said that Zelensky will eventually have to accept a deal. “He’ll have to like it. And if he doesn’t like it, then they should just keep fighting, I guess,” Trump said. Asked whether the White House was going to cut off U.S. support for Ukraine if Kyiv doesn’t sign on to the proposal, Trump declined to answer directly. But he said that “at some point he’s going to have to accept something, and he hasn’t accepted. You remember, right in the Oval Office, not so long ago, I said, ‘You don’t have the cards.’” Trump earlier told Fox News Radio on Friday that next Thursday would be “appropriate” to reach agreement on the proposed deal. “I’ve had a lot of deadlines, but if things are working well, you tend to extend the deadlines. But Thursday is what we think is an appropriate time,” he said, adding that Ukraine was losing land and “will lose in a short period of time.” Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of his security council Friday that the new peace plan could serve “as the basis for a final peace settlement,” though he claimed that the U.S. had not yet discussed the proposal in detail with Russia. “Russia is ready for peace talks and peaceful resolution of problems. But this requires, of course, a substantive discussion of all the details of the proposed plan,” Putin said. The plan is “pure Russian,” a senior European diplomat said. European leaders plan to meet Saturday on the sidelines of a Group of 20 meeting in Johannesburg to put together a counterproposal that they believe will be more favorable to Ukraine. Another diplomat involved in the discussions said Ukraine is under “extraordinary pressure” to agree to a deal. A separate person said that while Washington’s vow to withdraw support from Kyiv is real, it probably would not be implemented for another two weeks at the earliest. The leaders of France, Britain and Germany held a joint phone call with Zelensky on Friday and appeared to push back on several of the plan’s key points. German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said the leaders had agreed that “vital European and Ukrainian interests” must be safeguarded. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also spoke to Trump “in a good and confidential phone call,” the German leader wrote on X. “We have agreed on the next steps at the advisors’ level. I will now brief the European partners.” Trump was focused on a speedy resolution to the conflict but was willing to accept negotiations over the proposal, a person familiar with the call said. Breaking with the major European powers was Hungary, Russia’s closest partner in the European Union, which Trump has said could host a peace summit to end the war. “We are very supportive of this proposal, which we believe is the only credible alternative on the table,” Hungary’s minister for European Union affairs, János Bóka, told The Washington Post in an interview. Bóka said he had just completed meetings with Trump’s top aides for Europe, including the National Security Council’s Charles McLaughlin and the State Department’s Brendan Hanrahan, who have continued to encourage Hungary’s role in the peace process. Zelensky said in his address Friday that it was his duty to uphold his pledge to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence and that he would offer alternatives to the U.S. plan. The Ukrainian leader, one official said, had requested changes Thursday and Driscoll’s team agreed some could be made. The U.S. appears to have divided its teams between Witkoff and Driscoll to “play good cop and bad cop — one presses, the other tries to say, ‘Let’s work together to change [the plan],’” one official said. Following the Thursday meeting in Kyiv, Julie Davis, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, said the timeline for signing is “aggressive.” The site of a Russian drone strike in Odesa, Ukraine, is seen Friday. (Nina Liashonok/Reuters) The plan contains elements long pushed for by Moscow, including a full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the heavily fortified Donetsk region in the east of Ukraine, granting Russia full control of territory it has not been able to conquer in nearly four years of war. Russia would receive “de facto recognition” of its control of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as of the areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia it seized illegally, with the conflict in these regions frozen on the current front line. Ukraine would be forced to enshrine in its constitution that it will not seek to join NATO, while agreeing to significantly reduce the size of its armed forces from between 800,000 and 850,000 military personnel to 600,000. In return for making such sweeping concessions to an armed invader, Ukraine is to receive “reliable security guarantees,” although the plan does not contain any wording on what that would mean. Popular articles Next After a week of reprimands, some in Congress are having second thoughts After a week of reprimands, some in Congress are having second thoughts November 25, 2025 What’s going on with Trump’s gold ‘Oval Office’ sign? What’s going on with Trump’s gold ‘Oval Office’ sign? 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The document would be signed by Zelensky and Trump before being presented to the Russians. A Ukrainian serviceman prepares to fire a howitzer toward Russian troops near the town of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region on Thursday. (Reuters) Kyiv has long feared any arrangement that would force it to reduce its army and cede its most fortified territory in Donetsk, as that would give Moscow an upper hand territorially and militarily to eventually launch a new invasion. One person familiar with the contents of the plan said that it would require months of painstaking negotiations to bring it to a format that could be acceptable to Ukraine. “Even if Zelensky wanted to sign it, he couldn’t because there is no political basis for it,” the person said. “There are many nonstarters there.” “It is very similar to the minerals deal,” the person added, referring to the economic partnership agreement between Ukraine and the U.S. granting Washington preferential access to future Ukrainian minerals deals. “We modified it for three months” before it was signed. “But this deal is between the U.S., Ukraine, Russia and Europe, so I think it will be more like 12 months to negotiate. I think this is the beginning of the peace process, not the end.” Putin on Friday sought to blame Ukraine and its allies in Europe for the lack of progress, accusing them of “living in illusions and dreaming of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield.” Further Russian military breakthroughs were “inevitable,” he said. But analysts said aspects of the latest plan forwarded by the U.S. would also probably be unacceptable to Russia. “Although the concessions to Russia appear substantial, the plan would also require Moscow to abandon some of its earlier conditions — for example, the more radical reduction of Ukraine’s armed forces or parts of the political reform package,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Having received, in outline, much of what it wanted, Moscow now has to treat seriously something it is likely to view as fundamentally unsubstantiated and unreliable.” Ukrainians watch rescuers work Friday at a high-rise residential building that was hit by a Russian strike in Ternopil, western Ukraine. (Maxym Marusenko/EPA/Shutterstock) Russia has been making incremental advances on the battlefield, far outmanning and outgunning the Ukrainian side, and experts say any deal signed now would give Russia a huge advantage while it has the upper hand. But analysts say Moscow does not have the military capacity to make major gains, and it could have to launch a politically difficult mobilization next year to continue the conflict, while sanctions are forcing the government to undertake painful tax hikes and spending cuts. The proposal also calls for reintegrating Russia into the global economy as a result of the settlement of the conflict, with sanctions to be lifted “in stages and on a case-by-case basis.” If Russia were to attack Ukraine again, “in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated” and recognition of the seized territories would be revoked, the plan states. Elements of the agreement appear to take inspiration from the White House’s recent efforts to strike a peace deal in Gaza, including the establishment of a council to monitor violations of the agreement that would be personally chaired by Trump. Other ideas read like a wish list of long-standing Russian demands, including an end to further NATO expansion, which Washington and its allies have long said would impose unacceptable limits on the sovereign desires of European nations to join the alliance. Russia would also win reintegration into the Group of Eight world powers from which it was expelled following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. And the U.S. would get a 50 percent cut of the profits of investments made in Ukraine with $100 billion in frozen Russian government assets, while the rest of the frozen assets would be handed back to Russia — forestalling an ongoing European effort to use those assets to pay for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction. Some Republicans in Congress who are sympathetic to Kyiv vowed to oppose forcing Ukraine to accept a deal on bad terms. “I would oppose, and I know many in Congress would oppose, any coerced acceptance” of the deal, said Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in an interview. Zelensky has been weakened in recent weeks by a major corruption scandal that has ensnared several of his close associates and which — coupled with the exhausting pace of Russian military strikes and slow advances on the ground — could leave the Ukrainian leader with diminishing options as U.S. officials exert greater pressure on him to accept a deal. Belton reported from London, and Birnbaum and Hudson reported from Washington. Kate Brady in Berlin, Ellen Francis in Brussels, Noah Robertson in Washington, Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, and Mary Ilyushina in Berlin contributed to this report. What readers are saying The comments overwhelmingly criticize the U.S. pressure on Ukraine to sign a peace deal by Thanksgiving, viewing it as a capitulation to Russian demands and a betrayal of Ukraine's sover Comments