US envoy to meet Zelensky, Europe leaders in Berlin this weekend

KYIV, Ukraine: US President Donald Trump’s special envoy will meet with Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders in Berlin this weekend, the White House said, as Washington presses for a plan to end Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Trump has been stepping up pressure on Kyiv to reach an agreement since revealing a peace plan last month that has been accused of echoing Moscow’s key demands, including Ukraine ceding crucial territory.

The 28-point proposal has triggered a flurry of diplomacy between the United States and Ukraine’s European allies, with Kyiv officials recently saying they had sent Washington an updated plan.

A White House official confirmed to AFP on Friday the accuracy of a Wall Street Journal report that Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with Zelensky and European leaders over the weekend to discuss the status of peace negotiations.

Germany’s government has said Berlin will host the leaders, including the heads of the European Union and NATO, next Monday in the hours after Zelensky attends a German-Ukrainian business forum with Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The idea of a speedy accession by Ukraine into the European Union — a move opposed by Moscow — is included in the latest version of a US-led plan to end the war.

Europeans and Ukrainians are also asking the United States to provide them with “security guarantees” before Ukraine negotiates any territorial concessions, the French presidency said on Friday.

Concrete security guarantees for Ukraine are a “prerequisite” for any peace agreement and must be set out in a legally binding document, Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO, Alyona Getmanchuk, told AFP on Thursday.

EU membership

Under the latest US plan, Ukraine would join the EU as early as January 2027, a senior official familiar with the matter told AFP on Friday on condition of anonymity.

The complicated EU accession process usually takes years and requires a unanimous vote from all 27 members of the bloc, and some countries, most notably Hungary, have consistently voiced opposition to Ukraine joining.

Trump can use “various levers of influence” to convince leaders opposed to Ukraine’s membership to change their stance, Zelensky told journalists, including AFP, on Thursday.

Kyiv has long striven for EU membership but has struggled to eradicate endemic corruption — a core prerequisite for joining the bloc.

Full details of the plan have not been released.

Zelensky will discuss “the status of peace negotiations” with “numerous European heads of state and government, as well as the leaders of the EU and NATO”, Berlin said.

A long road

Moscow indicated Friday it was suspicious about the efforts to amend the US plan, for which it has signalled support.

“We have an impression that this version… will be worsened,” Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told the Kommersant business daily.

“It’ll be a long process,” he added, saying that Moscow had not seen an updated version since discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US envoys Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow last week.

Zelensky said Thursday that Washington wants only Ukraine, not Russia, to withdraw its troops from parts of the eastern Donetsk region, where a demilitarised “free economic zone” would be installed as a buffer between the two armies.

On Friday evening, an adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron said Kyiv was “not considering” a deal on the territories or a demilitarised zone.

Russia, which has the numerical advantage in manpower and weapons, has been grinding forward on the battlefield for months, notching up its quickest advance for a year in November.