President Trump and his top aides demanded on Wednesday that Ukraine accede to an American-designed proposal that would essentially grant Russia all the territory it has gained in the war, while offering Kyiv only vague security assurances.
The American plan, which would also explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was rejected by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, whose long-running dispute with Mr. Trump broke into the open two months ago in the Oval Office. The proposal also appears to call for the United States to recognize Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea, a region of Ukraine.
“There is nothing to talk about,” Mr. Zelensky said. “This violated our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of Ukraine.”
Mr. Trump shot back on social media that the Ukrainian president was being “inflammatory” and said he would only “prolong the ‘killing field.’”
Mr. Trump suggested the proposal was on the verge of acceptance by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “I think we have a deal with Russia,” he told reporters at the White House. The problem, he suggested, was Mr. Zelensky.
“I thought it might be easier to deal with Zelensky,” he said. “So far it’s harder.”
Vice President JD Vance struck a similar theme while traveling in India.
He said the United States would “walk away” from the peace process if both Ukraine and Russia refused to accept the American terms. But Mr. Zelensky was clearly the target.
“We’ve 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,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine.”
It was not clear whether the U.S. announcements were part of a pressure campaign to force Mr. Zelensky to make territorial concessions or whether they were designed to create a pretext for abandoning American support for Ukraine.
But the United States is essentially settling on a deal that favors the aggressor in the war, one that forces Ukraine to accept the forcible rewriting of its border and give up its hope of eventually joining NATO, as other former Soviet republics have.
European allies, who in recent weeks have been promising more military and economic support for Mr. Zelensky, have charged that Mr. Trump is essentially switching sides in the war, and that his real goal is to cast Ukraine aside and to find a way to normalize American relations with Moscow. Mr. Trump and his top aides have already begun discussing the prospect of lifting sanctions on Russia, and striking energy and mineral deals with Mr. Putin.
Whatever Mr. Trump’s motives, what happened on Wednesday signaled the possible abandonment of the American commitment to Mr. Zelensky that the United States would never engage in talks that excluded the country from determining its own fate.
While the United States did not release a text of its proposal, European officials who have seen it say that under its terms the United States would recognize Crimea — which Mr. Putin seized illegally in 2014 — as Russian territory. While the peninsula was considered part of Russia for more than 150 years, it was given to Ukraine by the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, nearly seven decades ago.
In his social media post, Mr. Trump said he was not asking Mr. Zelensky to recognize Crimea as Russia, even though the U.S. plan would call for Washington to do so.
“Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?” Mr. Trump wrote.
Just three years ago, Marco Rubio, then a senator and now Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, cosponsored an amendment to prohibit the United States from ever recognizing any Russian claim of sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it has seized.
“The United States cannot recognize Putin’s claims or we risk establishing a dangerous precedent for other authoritarian regimes, like the Chinese Communist Party, to imitate,” he said at the time, an allusion to Taiwan.
Now Mr. Rubio has become a defender of Mr. Trump’s approach, even if Ukraine has to surrender 20 percent of the country to Mr. Putin and give the Russian leader most of his war goals.
Mr. Trump has been taking other steps to mollify Mr. Putin. He has dismantled or neutralized units in the State Department and the Justice Department charged with collecting evidence of possible war crimes committed by Russia, including the killings of civilians in Bucha, outside of Kyiv, soon after the Russian invasion.
It is unclear what happens if Mr. Zelensky refuses to relent. Mr. Trump has suggested he would simply wash his hands of the peace effort — one he once said was solvable in 24 hours — and, in Mr. Rubio’s words, “move on.”
Already, the United States has limited its weapons shipments to Ukraine, although some weapons are still going through. And U.S. intelligence sharing has resumed, after a temporary pause to pressure Kyiv to come to the negotiating table.
But Mr. Trump continued his effort to belittle the Ukrainian leader, who was once cheered by lawmakers of both parties who likened him to Churchill. “The situation for Ukraine is dire,” Mr. Trump wrote. “He can have peace, or he can fight for another three years before losing the country.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Yulia Svyrydenko, the Ukrainian economy minister, also vowed that her country “will never recognize the occupation of Crimea.” Writing on X, the social media site, she said that “Ukraine is ready to negotiate — but not to surrender. There will be no agreement that hands Russia the stronger foundations it needs to regroup and return with greater violence.”
Mr. Vance told reporters in India that under the American proposal, “We’re going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.”
“The current lines, or somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” he added. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”
A Kremlin spokesman on Wednesday welcomed Mr. Vance’s remarks.
“The United States is continuing its mediation efforts, and we certainly welcome those efforts,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said. “Our interactions are ongoing but, to be sure, there is a lot of nuances around the peace settlement that need to be discussed.”
The aggressive push for a deal by Mr. Trump’s administration is a blow to European leaders, who have spent weeks attempting to shore up Ukraine’s position by brokering peace talks with the United States. The first effort convened last week in Paris and another session was set to start Wednesday in London before Mr. Rubio announced that he would no longer attend.
Mr. Rubio’s decision to cancel caught the British government off guard, according to a British official who said that David Lammy, the foreign secretary, had fully expected the secretary of state in London on Wednesday.
Lower-level diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine, and the United States still gathered for technical talks. But the absence of Mr. Rubio or Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s chief negotiator with Russia, renewed fears that Ukraine and Europe were being marginalized as the Trump administration seemed to be working primarily with Russia.
Mr. Witkoff is scheduled to be in Moscow later this week, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday.
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, arrived in London on Wednesday morning for the scaled-back talks, along with his country’s ministers of defense and foreign affairs.
“Despite everything,” he wrote on X, the social media platform, after arriving, “we continue working for peace.”
Reporting was contributed by Ségolène Le Stradic from Paris; Steven Erlanger and Anton Troianovski from Berlin; Nataliya Vasilyeva from Istanbul; Andrew E. Kramer from Kyiv, Ukraine; and Julian E. Barnes and John Ismay from Washington.
