After a meeting at the official level in London with allies on Wednesday, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrij Sybiha says he had a "constructive exchange of views on the path to peace" with the US envoy Keith Kellogg.
"Ukraine wants the war to end more than anyone else in the world. We are firmly determined to work together to achieve this goal", writes Sybiha on X and adds that he, among others, met with the UK's Defence Minister John Healey and Foreign Minister David Lammy.
The London meeting was initially intended as a pure ministerial meeting with foreign ministers from the USA, the UK, Germany, France, and Ukraine. However, the meeting was downgraded at short notice after the USA's Marco Rubio withdrew.
"Unconditional ceasefire"
Ukraine and its European allies have, according to Bloomberg's sources, told the USA that a ceasefire and clarity on security guarantees are now required. Only then can talks about territories with Russia become relevant.
This stance is partially confirmed by Andrij Jermak, chief of staff to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"We conveyed our position and emphasized that an immediate, full, and unconditional ceasefire must be the first step towards starting negotiations aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace", he writes on social media.
According to Jermak, Ukraine also stressed at the meeting that the country intends to stick to its "fundamental principles", which form "the basis for our independence and territorial integrity".
"Yes or no"
The US Vice President JD Vance confirmed before the meeting with media reports that the USA is proposing a peace solution where the conflict is halted at the current front lines.
The current lines, or somewhere near them, are where, I believe, the new lines in the conflict will ultimately be drawn, he says to a press corps during a trip to India.
Vance describes it as both warring parties having to make territorial concessions. However, while the Russian invasion forces control about a fifth of Ukraine's territory, the Ukrainians control very little of Russia's.
It's time for both parties to "either say yes or no" – otherwise, it's probably time for the USA to leave the process, says Vance. The statement echoes what Rubio recently said.
Joakim Magnå/TT
Facts: Front line movements
TT
Russia already in 2014 threw its weight behind paramilitary forces that took control of large parts of the regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Russian forces entered the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula the same year, prior to the country's illegal annexation of it.
When the large-scale war began in February 2022, Russian forces entered and took control of an area along the entire land border, as well as in a corridor where they approached the capital Kyiv.
Russia took control of the city of Mariupol in the south after a long and bloody siege, creating a land corridor of occupied territory that stretched to Crimea.
Ukraine's military struck back and early on pushed back the invasion forces entirely in the north. The same year, Ukraine took back the entire region of Kharkiv in the northeast and a large part of Kherson in the south in successful counter-offensives.
Since then, the front line has only moved marginally: Russia has advanced with small steps in the east, and both countries have made incursions across the border in the northeast. In the summer of 2024, Ukraine launched a surprise counter-offensive into Russian Kursk and took over an area there. In the spring of 2025, they lost almost the entire area.
