Europe voiced alarm at U.S.-Russia proposals for ending the war in Ukraine and insisted that Kyiv and its allies must have a central role in shaping any peace deal.

“What we as Europeans have always supported is a long-lasting and just peace and we welcome any efforts to achieve that,” the European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said on Thursday. “For any plan to work, it needs to have Ukrainians and Europeans on board,” she told reporters before a meeting of E.U. foreign ministers in Brussels.

The latest attempt by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to revive negotiations involves a 28-point plan drawn up in consultation between Moscow and Washington that’s modeled on the Gaza ceasefire. It outlines known Russian demands for concessions that are unacceptable to Kyiv and have so far hindered any breakthrough in efforts to reach a ceasefire.

A U.S. military delegation led by Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll has arrived in Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials including Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko and army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi. It’ll examine ways to force Russia to end the fighting, according to people familiar with the matter.

European diplomats expressed skepticism about any possible deal, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin has a track record of appearing to accept overtures when under pressure. Heavy U.S. sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJSC, are due to come into force on Friday, the first major set of penalties imposed by Trump over the war.

Russia’s latest initiative is an attempt to prevent those sanctions from coming into effect, according to people familiar with the matter. They requested anonymity to speak freely on the matter.

Europe is Ukraine’s main supporter in the war and “we expect to be consulted” about any peace plan, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters on Thursday. “It’s of course Europe’s security that’s at stake,” he said.

Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council Secretary Rustem Umerov met with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff earlier this week in Miami and was briefed about the plan, which appeared beneficial to Russia, according to a person familiar with the matter. The proposal includes demands for Ukraine to cede territory in its eastern Donbas region to Russia and to accept limits on the size of its army, the person said, asking not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.

It’s unclear what security guarantees Ukraine would receive in return, or what, if any, concessions Russia would be required to make.

Dutch Foreign Minister David Van Weel, like many of his European counterparts, echoed Kallas’s view and said his country wasn’t consulted on the plans. “It’s up to Ukraine,” he told reporters. “It’s about Ukrainian territory. It’s about Ukrainian sovereignty. Without the buy-in of Ukraine, you won’t get the support of the Europeans.”

Ukrainian and European officials don’t know if Trump backs the proposals spearheaded by Witkoff and what happens if Kyiv rejects them, according to people familiar with the matter. Ukraine relies on U.S. intelligence support for air defense and on U.S. weapons that are paid for mostly by the Europeans.

While the push for territorial concessions to Russia isn’t new, they are concerned that Kyiv could face further damaging demands without getting ironclad security guarantees in exchange, the people said.

The proposal comes at a particularly vulnerable moment for Zelenskyy as his country faces rolling blackouts and a rising death toll from relentless Russian airstrikes aiming to break the population’s morale ahead of winter.

His administration is reeling from a corruption scandal that has already led to the ouster of two government ministers and implicated his former long-time business partner in a scheme to embezzle as much as $100 million. Investigators are probing kickbacks from contractors who were building defenses to protect Ukraine’s nuclear energy facilities from Russian airstrikes.

The prospects for critical financial aid to Ukraine are also in doubt amid divisions within the E.U. over the use of frozen Russian assets to provide €140 billion in loans to Kyiv.

For Trump, the latest initiative to end the war in Ukraine follows a series of domestic setbacks including a bruising battle over the release of files on the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein that inflamed tensions in his own party and threatened to undermine his agenda.

He pledged during his election campaign to end the war in 24 hours. But all of Trump’s attempts, including at a summit with Putin in Alaska in August, have foundered on the Russian leader’s refusal to budge from his maximalist demands on Ukraine.

Europe’s claim to have a seat at the table comes as the continent has taken on the bulk of responsibility for funding Ukraine’s defense effort. Trump ended U.S. financing for Kyiv, leaving other members of NATO paying for U.S.-produced weapons that are being shipped to the war-ravaged country.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down the prospect for a breakthrough, saying there was nothing new to add since the Alaska summit.

“Achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X. “That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said discussions on a durable peace “should start with a ceasefire on the contact line that allows for all the other discussions on the question of territory and security guarantees.”

Germany echoed that stance. “The first prerequisite is that Vladimir Putin ends his war of aggression against Ukraine and that we reach a ceasefire without any preconditions, and that then fair negotiations can take place,” Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told reporters in Brussels.

The Kremlin has given no indication it’s ready to compromise and has continued its deadly airstrikes on civilian targets across Ukraine. Russia wants to seize all four regions in the east of Ukraine that it claims to have annexed in 2022, but has never fully controlled.

Moscow has made clear that it wants to control all of the eastern Donetsk region before it would consider agreeing to a ceasefire.

“We have to find out whether it’s really the big boys that are behind this plan or not,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters. “Questions about whether shift of land and territory should be a part of peace must not be negotiated without the Ukrainians, we’ve made that crystal clear.”

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—With assistance from Donato Paolo Mancini, Jan Bratanic, Alberto Nardelli and Daryna Krasnolutska.

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