Russia indicates it’s open to Ukraine joining EU as part of peace deal to end war, US officials say

Rus­sia has in­di­cat­ed it is open to Ukraine join­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union as part of a po­ten­tial peace deal aimed at end­ing Rus­sia’s war on Ukraine, and there’s now con­sen­sus on about 90% of the U.S.-au­thored peace plan, U.S. of­fi­cials said Mon­day.

The of­fi­cials said that ro­bust ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s en­voys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kush­n­er, and Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy and his team led to progress on nar­row­ing dif­fer­ences on se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees Kyiv said must be pro­vid­ed to Ukraine as well as the con­tentious is­sue on Moscow’s de­mand that Ukraine con­cede land in the east­ern Don­bas.

Kush­n­er and Witkoff are ex­pect­ed to meet over din­ner on Mon­day evening with Ukrain­ian as well British, Ger­man and French lead­ers for fur­ther talks. Trump, who has been briefed twice on the Berlin talks, plans to di­al in to the din­ner from Wash­ing­ton.

The ne­go­tia­tors and oth­ers in­volved in the peace talks will like­ly meet in Mi­a­mi or else­where in the Unit­ed States this week­end to con­tin­ue their work, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. of­fi­cials.

The U.S. of­fi­cials al­so said the ad­min­is­tra­tion plans to put for­ward the se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees agree­ment be­fore the Sen­ate for its ap­proval, al­though they didn’t spec­i­fy whether it would be rat­i­fied like a treaty, which needs two-thirds ap­proval from the cham­ber.

The U.S. of­fi­cials who briefed re­porters af­ter Witkoff and Kush­n­er met with Ze­len­skyy and oth­er Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cials in Berlin over the last two days said that such an of­fer over Ukraine join­ing the EU would be a ma­jor con­ces­sion by Moscow. But Rus­sia has pre­vi­ous­ly said it does not ob­ject to Ukraine join­ing the EU.

The U.S. of­fi­cials, who were not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly by the White House and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said that the U.S. has al­so agreed to pro­vide un­spec­i­fied se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees to Kyiv as part of the deal but that such an of­fer won’t be on the ta­ble “for­ev­er.”

The lat­est round of talks be­tween Ze­len­skyy and U.S. en­voys end­ed Mon­day as Kyiv faces Wash­ing­ton’s pres­sure to swift­ly ac­cept a U.S.-bro­kered peace deal while con­fronting an in­creas­ing­ly as­sertive Moscow.

Ukraine’s lead ne­go­tia­tor, Rustem Umerov, said on so­cial me­dia that “re­al progress” had been achieved at the talks in Berlin with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s spe­cial en­voy Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kush­n­er as well as Eu­ro­pean of­fi­cials. The talks last­ed rough­ly 90 min­utes, af­ter a five-hour ses­sion Sun­day.

The U.S. gov­ern­ment said in a so­cial me­dia post on Witkoff’s ac­count af­ter Sun­day’s meet­ing that “a lot of progress was made.”

The search for pos­si­ble com­pro­mis­es has run in­to ma­jor ob­sta­cles, in­clud­ing con­trol of Ukraine’s east­ern Donet­sk re­gion, which is most­ly oc­cu­pied by Russ­ian forces.

Ze­len­skyy has ex­pressed readi­ness to drop Ukraine’s bid to join the NA­TO mil­i­tary al­liance if the U.S. and oth­er West­ern na­tions give Kyiv se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees sim­i­lar to those of­fered to NA­TO mem­bers. But Ukraine’s pref­er­ence re­mains NA­TO mem­ber­ship as the best se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tee to pre­vent fur­ther Russ­ian ag­gres­sion how­ev­er this op­tion doesn’t cur­rent­ly have full back­ing from all al­lies.

Still, Ukraine has con­tin­ued to re­ject the U.S. push for ced­ing ter­ri­to­ry to Rus­sia. Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to with­draw its forces from the part of Donet­sk re­gion still un­der its con­trol as one of the key con­di­tions for peace.

Ze­len­skyy’s itin­er­ary on Mon­day al­so in­clud­ed meet­ings with Ger­man and oth­er Eu­ro­pean lead­ers. French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron’s of­fice con­firmed he would trav­el to Berlin lat­er Mon­day.

“The is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty in par­tic­u­lar will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine whether this war ac­tu­al­ly comes to a stand­still and whether it flares up again,” a spokesper­son for Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz, Ste­fan Ko­r­nelius, told re­porters.

The Russ­ian pres­i­dent has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NA­TO as a ma­jor threat to Moscow’s se­cu­ri­ty and a rea­son for launch­ing the full-scale in­va­sion in Feb­ru­ary 2022. The Krem­lin has de­mand­ed that Ukraine re­nounce the bid for al­liance mem­ber­ship as part of any prospec­tive peace set­tle­ment.

Ze­len­skyy em­pha­sized that any West­ern se­cu­ri­ty as­sur­ances would need to be legal­ly bind­ing and sup­port­ed by the U.S. Con­gress.

The Krem­lin said Mon­day it ex­pect­ed to be up­dat­ed on the Berlin talks by the U.S. side.

Asked whether the ne­go­ti­a­tions could be over by Christ­mas, Krem­lin spokesper­son Dmit­ry Peskov said try­ing to pre­dict a po­ten­tial time frame for a peace deal was a “thank­less task.”

“I can on­ly speak for the Russ­ian side, for Pres­i­dent Putin,” Peskov said. “He is open to peace, to a se­ri­ous peace and se­ri­ous de­ci­sions. He is ab­solute­ly not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time.”

Putin has de­nied plans to at­tack any Eu­ro­pean al­lies.

In Lon­don, mean­while, the new head of the MI6 spy agency was set to warn on Mon­day how Putin’s de­ter­mi­na­tion to ex­port chaos around the world is rewrit­ing the rules of con­flict and cre­at­ing new se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges.

Blaise Me­treweli was us­ing her first pub­lic speech as chief of the Unit­ed King­dom’s for­eign in­tel­li­gence ser­vice to say that Britain faces in­creas­ing­ly un­pre­dictable and in­ter­con­nect­ed threats, with em­pha­sis on “ag­gres­sive, ex­pan­sion­ist” Rus­sia.

Drone strikes con­tin­ue

Rus­sia fired 153 drones of var­i­ous types at Ukraine overnight Sun­day in­to Mon­day, ac­cord­ing to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said 133 drones were neu­tral­ized, while 17 more hit their tar­gets.

In Rus­sia, the De­fense Min­istry on Mon­day said forces de­stroyed 130 Ukrain­ian drones overnight. An ad­di­tion­al 16 drones were de­stroyed be­tween 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. lo­cal time.

Eigh­teen drones were shot down over Moscow it­self, the de­fense min­istry said. Flights were tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed at the city’s Do­mode­do­vo and Zhukovsky air­ports as part of safe­ty mea­sures, of­fi­cials said.

Dam­age de­tails and ca­su­al­ty fig­ures were not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able. —BERLIN (AP)

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Sto­ry by STE­FANIE DAZIO and AAMER MAD­HANI | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Aamer Mad­hani re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. Al­so con­tribut­ing to this re­port were Se­ung Min Kim in Wash­ing­ton, Pietro De Cristo­faro in Berlin, Il­lia Novikov in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Katie Marie Davies in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land,.