The Trump administration wants to recognize Russia's control over occupied Ukrainian territories / What this means and why the Europeans oppose it

According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, Trump's emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, will go to Moscow with this offer. The European allies rejected the idea of ​​recognizing the territories conquered by Russia, and a Romanian expert warned that such a plan would be “disastrous, with potentially fatal implications in the medium and long term.”

The United States is ready to recognize Russia's control of Crimea and other occupied Ukrainian territories in order to secure a deal to end the war.

The British newspaper The Telegraph writes that Donald Trump sent Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to make this direct offer to Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The plan to recognize the territory, which violates US diplomatic convention, could go ahead despite concerns from Ukraine's European allies, who have warned of the dramatic effect of the decision.

“It is increasingly clear that the Americans do not care about the European position. They say that the Europeans can do what they want,” said a well-informed source, quoted by the newspaper.

Putin's wish

Russia's president said on Thursday that Washington's legal recognition of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory will be one of the key issues in negotiations on the US president's peace plan.

Putin emphasized that Kiev's leadership is illegitimate, therefore, any peace plan should be recognized by international partners.

“We want to reach an agreement with Ukraine, but at the moment it is practically impossible, legally impossible. We need the decision to be recognized at the international level,” the Russian head of state explained.

On Friday, the Kremlin said it had received a revised strategy for ending the war, drawn up after talks between Ukrainian and US officials in Geneva last weekend.

An initial 28-point peace plan, formulated by Witkoff after talks with Russian officials, offered “de facto” US recognition of Crimea and the two eastern Donbas regions.

The strategy also proposed “de facto” recognition of Russian-controlled territories behind the contact line in Ukraine's Kherson and Zaporizhia regions after any ceasefire agreement.

In Geneva, Ukrainian and American officials negotiated a new plan, which is less favorable to Moscow. But several sources suggested that American offers of recognition remained part of the strategy.

“No sane person would sign a document giving up the territory today”

Kiev would not be obliged to recognize Russian control over the territories it has illegally annexed since 2014.

The Ukrainian constitution prohibits any president or government from ceding territory without first putting the issue before voters in a national referendum.

Andrii Iermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, and Rustem Umerov, his national security adviser, were due to fly to Florida to meet with US officials this weekend.

In a new interview with Atlantic magazine, Yermak, who negotiated the latest peace plan, said: “No person in their right mind would sign a document giving up territory today.”

“The Constitution forbids this. Nobody can do this, unless they want to violate the Ukrainian Constitution and oppose the Ukrainian people,” he said.

The latest peace plan left the most contentious issues in brackets, including any final territorial concessions, to be completed only after face-to-face talks between Zelenskiy and Trump.

The concern of Europeans

Washington's offer of recognition has caused concern among European allies, who have repeatedly ruled out supporting a peace deal that would tolerate forced border redrawing.

“We have been clear about the principle that borders should not be changed by force. This remains one of the fundamental principles for maintaining stability and peace in Europe and beyond,” said Ukraine's allies, gathered this week in a “coalition of the willing” summit.

So far, the US and Europe have refused to recognize Russia's control of Crimea, the peninsula that Putin illegally annexed in 2014.

Moscow announced the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in September 2022, despite not yet fully conquering Ukrainian territories.

“Potentially fatal implications in the medium and long term”

The recognition by the USA of the territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea, would also have effects on Romania.

In an interview for HotNews, on the subject of the 28-point plan of the USA, Marius Ghincea, a researcher at the Swiss university ETH Zurich, specialized in foreign policy and security, warned about the recognition by the USA of the territories occupied by Russia.

“The plan has indirect strategic effects for Romania. It creates strategic dilemmas regarding security in the Black Sea, especially those related to the extraction of resources from hydrocarbons, directly connected to our energy security,” he said.

The proposals “create a political precedent of accepting Russian military conquests that weakens the norms that ensure the security of our borders and imposes a self-limitation of NATO in the east of the continent, in which case questions arise related to NATO's ability to have a more robust defense and deterrence posture in the Black Sea and on the entire eastern flank”, added the expert.

“For us and for the Republic of Moldova, such a plan is disastrous, with potentially fatal implications in the medium and long term”, emphasized Ghincea.