‘Absolutely disgraceful draft’: Ukraine soldiers react to US peace proposal

Ukrainian soldiers feature reacted to a outline of chair Donald Trump's 28-point public security design for Kyiv.

In an interaction with the BBC, several Ukrainian soldiers criticised the original US plan – details of which were leaked last week.

In eastern Ukraine, a soldier Yaroslav reacted to the plan saying: “It sucks…no one will support it”. Another army medic with a call sign “Shtutser” also dismissed it as an "absolutely disgraceful draft of a peace plan, unworthy of our attention".

According to the original US plan, Ukraine is expected to relinquish control of the entire Donbas region, which includes the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in eastern Ukraine, a crucial objective for Russia.

"Let them take it," a Ukrainian soldier, with a call sign of Snake, told the BBC. "There's practically no one left in the cities and villages… We're not fighting for the people but for the land, while losing more people."

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Another officer in Ukraine's general staff, Andrii, described the proposal for Luhansk and Donetsk as “painful and difficult”, but added that his country may have no other choice.

Matros, who has been fighting since 2018, however, told BBC that giving up the Donbas would "nullify everything - all the efforts of the armed forces".

On one of the proposals in the peace place that would make Ukraine limit its armed forces size to 600,000, Snake told the British broadcaster that he believes that his country will need many of those currently in uniform to help rebuild Ukraine when the war ends.

"What's the point of having so many people in the army if there will be security guarantees?" he asks.

According to the BBC, the proposal of 600,000 soldiers is still significantly more than before the full-scale invasion, when Ukraine's full-time strength was around 250,000, but smaller than its current size. Recent estimates have suggested that Ukraine's military strength exceeds 800,000.

In their counterplan, Ukraine and its European partners have stated that talks with Russia on any exchange of territory can begin only after the war stops along the current line of contact, according to Bloomberg, which quoted people familiar with the matter.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the peace plan was developed with input from Russia and incorporated earlier points from Ukraine.

Ukraine's negotiator on Sunday said that the latest version of the US draft plan now includes most of Kyiv's “key priorities”, after a few rounds of talks in Geneva.

"The current version of the document, although still in the final stages of approval, already reflects most of Ukraine's key priorities," negotiator Rustem Umerov, who is also the secretary of Ukraine's security council, was quoted as saying by AFP.

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