Explainer-What might a Ukraine peace deal look like?

By Guy Faulconbridge and Olena Harmash

MOSCOW/KYIV, Dec 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Moscow for talks on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin about a possible agreement to end the war in Ukraine.

A leaked set of U.S. draft peace proposals emerged last week but European powers made counter-proposals and U.S. and Ukrainian officials have held talks since then in Geneva and Florida, without providing details of their discussions.

So what might a peace deal look like? 

WHO WOULD GET WHAT TERRITORY?

Russia, which invaded of Ukraine in February 2022, controls about 116,000 square km (44,800 square miles), or more than 19% of Ukraine, according to the Russian military.

That is just one percentage point more than two years ago but Russia's forces have advanced in 2025 at the fastest pace since 2022, according to pro-Ukrainian maps, although Kyiv says the human cost for Russia has been high. Russia says the cost for Ukraine has been high.

Russia says Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk - together known as Donbas - plus the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions are now legally part of Russia. The United Nations has said the annexations are illegal under international law, and they are not recognised by most of the international community.

Russia also controls parts of additional Ukrainian regions such as Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk, but it has not achieved its aim of controlling all the Donbas region.

Under the initial 28-point set of U.S. proposals, Ukraine would be obliged to withdraw from heavily fortified parts of Donbas that it controls - around 5,000 square km - and that area would be considered a neutral demilitarized buffer zone, internationally recognised as Russian territory.

Under these proposals, Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk would be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the United States. Russian gains in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson up to the front line will also be recognised "de facto". 

Under the counter-proposal from European powers, which saw the initial draft U.S. plan as heavily pro-Russian, Ukraine would commit not to recover Russian-controlled territory by force.

An additional set of proposals was then discussed by U.S. and Ukrainian officials, and Zelenskiy said the talks in Florida had "refined" a framework peace agreement developed in Geneva.

Zelenskiy has acknowledged that some Russian-occupied territories might be recognised as temporarily de facto occupied but has ruled out any de jure recognition. He has ruled out giving away territory, which he says he has no mandate to do, and has urged Kyiv's Western allies not to reward Russia over its war in Ukraine.

WHAT ABOUT NATO?

One of Putin's central demands for ending the war is that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging the U.S.-led military alliance NATO eastwards; Russian officials cite an assurance to that effect from U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.

The initial U.S. peace proposals included a clause that NATO will not expand further, that Ukraine would enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO and that NATO would include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future. Ukraine would get short-term preferential access to the European market while its bid to join the European Union was being considered.

The European counter-proposal significantly changes the NATO clauses outlined in the draft U.S. proposal: it says that Ukraine's NATO membership would depend on consensus among NATO members.

NATO leaders agreed in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would one day become members. Ukraine's parliament in 2018 voted to enshrine the goal of joining NATO in its constitution.

Trump has said that previous U.S. support for Ukraine's NATO membership bid was a cause of the war, and has indicated that Ukraine will not get membership.

NATO says it is up to individual countries whether they want to join the alliance.

HOW WOULD SECURITY GUARANTEES WORK?

Ukraine says it needs a robust security guarantee to prevent another Russian attack. Russia has demanded caps on the size of Ukraine's army and says Ukraine should be neutral.

The U.S. has been wary of a security guarantee that would lock the West into a possible future war between NATO and Russia over Ukraine.

Ukraine and its European allies have said Moscow is not a reliable guarantor and neutrality for Ukraine would leave Europe exposed. Russia says Ukraine and European powers cannot be trusted.

Moscow has also demanded  protection for Russian speakers and Orthodox believers. Kyiv rules out any limits on its armed forces and says Russian speakers already have all the protections they need, citing the fact that Zelenskiy's first language is Russian, a language he uses frequently. 

WHAT ABOUT MONEY AND RUSSIAN FROZEN ASSETS?

The initial U.S. proposals state that Russia, which is under Western sanctions over the war, would be reintegrated into the global economy and invited to be part of the G8, an informal forum grouping Russia and the Group of Seven wealthy nations. Russia's membership of the G8 was suspended in 2014 after it annexed Crimea.

The United States said in its initial proposals that it will strike a long-term agreement with Russia to develop "energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centres, rare-earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities."

European Union leaders are seeking agreement on a plan to use frozen Russian assets held in Europe as the basis for a 140 billion euro ($163 billion) loan to Ukraine. Russian officials have said such a move would be illegal.

WHAT ABOUT NUCLEAR ISSUES, ELECTIONS AND BUSINESS?

Peace moves could possibly entail Russia and the United States agreeing to resume talks on strategic nuclear arms control.

The future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which is in Ukrainian territory controlled by Russia, is unclear.

There has been media speculation that Russia might offer U.S. companies stakes in its vast natural resources sector.

Washington has floated the idea of holding elections in Ukraine. Putin has said the Kyiv leadership lost legitimacy after refusing to hold elections when Zelenskiy's elected term expired. Kyiv says it cannot hold elections while under martial law and defending its territory against Russia.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Olena Harmash in Kyiv, additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Brussels; Editing by Timothy Heritage)