US poised to recognise Ukraine’s occupied territories as Russian to secure peace deal

Washington is prepared to recognise Russian-annexed Crimea as well as the Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine as Russian territory to secure a deal to end the war, The Telegraph reported on Friday.

US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to travel to Moscow next week to make a “direct offer” to Vladimir Putin to legally recognise the occupied territories while disregarding concerns from European allies, The Telegraph wrote.

“It’s increasingly clear the Americans don’t care about the European position. They say the Europeans can do whatever they want,” a source told the newspaper.

Putin confirmed on Thursday that a US delegation was due in Russia next week to discuss Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine, and stressed that the status of Crimea and Donbas would be “a key issue” during their talks.

The original 28-point peace plan, which was put together without consultation with Kyiv by Witkoff and Russian officials, offered the “de facto recognition” of Russian control over Crimea and Donbas as well as a significant reduction in US military aid to Ukraine and limits to the size of the Ukrainian army.

An “updated and refined” version of the plan was drafted during talks between the US and Ukraine in Geneva last week. However, multiple sources told The Telegraph that the American offer to recognise Crimea and Donbas as part of Russia had remained on the table.

Russia formally annexed Crimea in 2014 after seizing the peninsula in the wake of the Euromaidan protests across Ukraine that ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. On 30 September 2022, Russia annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine amid the ongoing invasion, despite Moscow not exercising full control over any of the territories.

Under Trump’s plan, the present line of contact in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions would be frozen, essentially granting Moscow de facto control of large areas of both, with Ukraine being granted unspecified “security guarantees” by Washington if it agrees to the deal.

Should the US recognise these territories as Russian, it would mark a break from Washington's diplomatic conventions, The Telegraph noted, offering legitimacy to territories captured by an aggressor state.