Europe seeks Nato-style pact, higher army cap for Ukraine

BRUSSELS: Europeans have submitted a modified version of the US' peace plan for Ukraine that pushes back on proposed limits to Kyiv's armed forces and territorial concessions, according to a document seen by Reuters on Sunday.

The document, prepared for talks on the plan in Geneva, proposes that Ukraine's military be capped at 800,000 "in peacetime" rather than a blanket cap of 600,000 proposed by the US plan. It also says "negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact", rather than pre-determining that certain areas should be recognised as "de facto Russian", as the US plan suggests.


The counter-proposal was drafted by the so-called European E3 powers - the UK, France and Germany, a source said. The document takes the US proposal as its basis, but goes through point by point with suggested deletions or changes. It proposes that Ukraine receive a security guarantee from the US similar to Nato's Article 5 clause. It pushes back on the US proposal for the use of Russian assets frozen in the West. "Ukraine will be fully reconstructed and compensated financially, including through Russian sovereign assets that will remain frozen until Russia compensates damage to Ukraine," the document says.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio said he had made good progress in talks. "So I think the takeaway from it is, I would say, probably best meeting and day we've had so far in this entire exercise," Rubio told reporters in Geneva.

(This is a reuters story)