A US-proposed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine reportedly includes a provision for Moscow to maintain control of eastern Donbas in exchange for paying a “rental fee,” The Telegraph reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the plan.
Kyiv would retain legal ownership of the territories, the sources said.
The plan, reportedly developed by US and Russian presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, would also see Ukrainian forces clear the remaining non-occupied areas of Donbas, turning them into a “demilitarized zone,” Axios reported on Wednesday.
In return, Moscow could make concessions in the partially-occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Kyiv would also scale back its armed forces, stop receiving some Western weapons, and forgo hosting foreign troops, according to the Financial Times (FT).
The “lease” idea mirrors Trump’s business-style approach to international deals, The Telegraph said. Moscow would effectively pay a “land tax” to offset Ukraine’s losses from Donbas, a mineral-rich region.
Under Ukraine’s constitution, any transfer of territory requires a referendum, which would likely fail, making a lease agreement a possible workaround.
NBC sources said Ukraine was not involved in drafting the plan and was only briefed on its broad outlines.
A source close to Kyiv described the timing – amid a corruption scandal in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government – as a likely Kremlin attempt to exploit perceived weaknesses in Ukraine’s leadership.
European and US allies also said they had not been informed. A British diplomatic official told Politico that London was unaware of the proposals, despite its close ties with US envoys.
EU High Representative Kaja Kallas signaled on Thursday that Brussels would not accept any peace initiative negotiated without Kyiv’s knowledge.
Officials on both sides of the Atlantic scrambled to distance themselves from the alleged plan, refusing to confirm whether anything resembling the proposal exists.
One senior US official, contacted by Kyiv Post, dismissed the document as a “maximalist Kremlin fantasy,” the kind of outlandish wish list Washington believes Moscow circulates to test Western nerves.
Other Trump administration officials offered the diplomatic equivalent of a blank stare, declining to confirm or deny that such a plan had ever been drafted, let alone circulated.
Across Europe, skepticism hardened into outright scorn. Several Western diplomats described the rumor mill as yet another attempt by Moscow to manufacture momentum for a deal that Kyiv would never accept and the West would never endorse.
The mood in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris leaned more toward annoyance than alarm, with diplomats calling the episode a “familiar Russian parlor trick.”
In a late-evening social-media post, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that ending a conflict of this scale “requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas,” a formulation that seemed designed to justify the brainstorming without acknowledging any specific proposal.
The message landed as an unmistakable signal that Washington is exploring a menu of potential end-states, even as it publicly dismisses the flashier, Russia-friendly versions orbiting online.