US wants Ukraine to withdraw from Donbas and create ‘free economic zone’, says Zelenskyy

 

US wants Ukraine to withdraw from Donbas and create ‘free economic zone’, says Zelenskyy

 

Ukrainian president says plan would not be fair without guarantees that Russia would not simply take over zone

 

Shaun Walker in Kyiv

Thu 11 Dec 2025 21.20 CET

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/11/us-wants-ukraine-to-withdraw-from-donbas-and-create-free-economic-zone-says-zelenskyy

 

The US wants Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donbas region, and Washington would then create a “free economic zone” in the parts Kyiv currently controls, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.

 

Previously, the US had suggested Kyiv should hand over the parts of Donbas it still controlled to Russia, but the Ukrainian president said on Thursday that Washington had now suggested a compromise version in which Ukrainian troops would withdraw, but Russian troops would not advance into the territory.

 

“Who will govern this territory, which they are calling a ‘free economic zone’ or a ‘demilitarised zone’ – they don’t know,” said the Ukrainian president, speaking with journalists in Kyiv on Thursday.

 

Zelenskyy said Ukraine did not believe the plan was fair without guarantees that Russian troops would not simply take over the zone after a Ukrainian withdrawal.

 

Zelenskyy said: “If one side’s troops have to retreat and the other side stays where they are, then what will hold back these other troops, the Russians? Or what will stop them disguising themselves as civilians and taking over this free economic zone? This is all very serious. It’s not a fact that Ukraine would agree to it, but if you are talking about a compromise then it has to be a fair compromise.”

 

He said if Ukraine did agree to such a scheme, there would need to be elections or a referendum to ratify it, saying that only “the Ukrainian people” could make decisions on territorial concessions.

 

Under the US plans, said Zelenskyy, Ukraine would withdraw from Donbas, where Russia is advancing, while the frontlines would be frozen in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Russia would give up a few small pockets of land it controls in other regions.

 

Zelenskyy has been under immense pressure from Donald Trump to sign up to the US peace plan. In recent days Trump has attacked Zelenskyy, claiming he “has not even read” the draft peace plan and suggesting he lacks legitimacy and Ukraine should hold an election.

 

Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Thursday: “The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war, and he is sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting.”

 

Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian negotiating team had sent their revised plan back to Washington on Wednesday, and that questions over territory and control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant were two of the remaining sticking points. “It’s not the final plan; it’s a reaction to what we received … the plan is constantly being worked on and edited, and this is a continuous process that is still going on,” he said.

 

If Washington and Kyiv do agree, the much bigger question remains of whether Vladimir Putin is really ready to sign a deal or is merely buying time with fake negotiations and hoping to continue his military advance over the winter.

 

In Berlin, the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, said on Thursday that if Putin was allowed to get his way in Ukraine then the prospect of war in Europe would become more real, warning that the continent had been “quietly complacent” over the threat from Russia.

 

A new war waged by Russia could come within the next five years and could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured”, Rutte suggested. He issued a now-familiar call for all European countries to increase defence spending. “Too many believe that time is on our side. It is not. The time for action is now,” he added.

 

Rutte is among the European politicians who have been working hard to keep the Trump administration on side when it comes to Ukraine policy, as the US president appears to get ever more impatient with the lack of a peace deal.

 

On Thursday afternoon, Zelenskyy held a video call with about 30 leaders from the “coalition of the willing” nations, which support Ukraine, but without Trump.

 

In some European capitals there is increasing sentiment that Ukraine will have to make painful compromises, as the country enters its fourth winter of full-scale war, with a difficult situation on the frontline and huge power issues caused by repeated Russian strikes on energy infrastructure.

 

However, the leaders of France, Britain and Germany, who met Zelenskyy in Downing Street on Monday, are keen to stress that only Ukraine can decide on territorial questions. “It would be a mistake to force the Ukrainian president into a peace that his people will not accept after four years of suffering and death,” Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said on Thursday.

 

Zelenskyy said that in addition to the overall framework agreement, there were two separate documents that Ukraine hoped to sign in the coming days, one on potential security guarantees that would come into effect if Russia attacked Ukraine again and one on Ukraine’s economic renewal.

 

Also on Thursday, top EU officials met in Lviv, in western Ukraine, to discuss Ukraine’s accession prospects, even as Hungary’s Russia-friendly leader, Viktor Orbán, continues to block formal negotiations.

 

All other EU members are in favour of Ukraine joining, and officials have said they want to accept Ukraine anyway provided the country can move forward on aligning its laws and practices with EU regulations. “Ukraine will become a member of the EU, and nobody can block it,” said Marta Kos, the EU enlargement commissioner, at the talks.

 

Zelenskyy said he hoped Trump would put pressure on Hungary and any other EU country that might block Ukraine. “We all understand that the US president has various levers of influence, and these will work on those who are currently blocking Ukraine,” he said.