U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he signs executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 23, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Nearing the tone-setting 100th day of his second administration at the end of April, U.S. President Donald Trump has ramped up pressure on Russia and Ukraine to end their three-year conflict at the steep price of territorial concession.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, a former real estate mogul turned Kremlin whisperer, arrived in Moscow on Friday, according to Interfax. He is expected to carry out further peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin — whom he has met with thrice prior — at a fragile time in the Moscow-Washington relations that have only thawed since Trump’s January return to the White House.
The Kremlin has so far approached U.S.-sponsored Ukraine peace negotiations — which resulted in a partial, ill observed ceasefire on energy infrastructure last month — with amiable intractability, avoiding ire that Trump has largely directed at Ukraine’s leadership for its hesitations throughout the talks and its insistence over explicit security guarantees. The Washington leader has repeatedly called out his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy for overestimating his leverage in both the conflict and the discussions, as well as — earlier this week — disregarding the possibility of renouncing Crimea.
But intensifying Russian attacks against Kyiv earlier this week following a lull over the Easter holiday led Trump to take a rare shot against Putin on Thursday.
“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform.
“Not necessary, and very bad timing,” the White House leader added. “Vladimir, STOP!”
“I didn’t like last night, I wasn’t happy with it,” Trump said in a separate press briefing. “We’re putting a lot of pressure on Russia, and Russia knows that.”
Trump’s frustration has been stoked by the stalling pace of U.S.-led peace diplomatic efforts which Washington has indicated it could be close to abandoning. On Wednesday, intended talks in London between U.K., French, German, Ukrainian and U.S. officials were downgraded after the withdrawal of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Witkoff.
“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say ‘yes’ or for the United States to walk away from this process,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance said earlier in the week.
The silhouette of the U.S.’ final peace offer remains elusive, although Axios reports the latest framework offers Russia U.S. recognition of Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, the lifting of sanctions imposed since 2014 and Ukraine’s renunciation of ambitions to join the NATO military alliance — a critical long-held objective the Kremlin invoked as underpinning its 2022 invasion.
In return, Ukraine would secure a coveted security guarantee against further Russian incursions, part of the Kharkiv region — one of four annexed by Russia in the three-year conflict — and aid to rebuild.
CNBC could not independently confirm the terms of the framework and has reached out to the White House for comment.
If they materialize, the framework conditions will imply a stark shift in tone for Ukraine, whose leadership has persistently excluded the possibility of territorial concessions.
Vance earlier this week signaled that peace required “at a broad level the parties saying: we’re going to stop the killing, we’re going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.”
He elaborated, “The current lines, somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the lines in the conflict. Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give some of the territory they currently own. They’re going to have to be some territorial swaps.”
Zelenskyy this week struck back at the notion of surrendering sovereign land, saying categorically, according to a translation, that “Ukraine does not legally recognise the occupation of Crimea. There is nothing to talk about. It is beyond our Constitution.”
But Ukraine’s top brass appears more grudgingly open to the possibility:
“In one of the scenarios is, what you say, to give up territory. It’s not fair but for the peace, temporary peace, maybe it can be [a] solution. Temporarily,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a TV interview with BBC News.
