Ukraine peace plan expected to be rejected by Russia — likely extending war until after Christmas at minimum: sources

Russia is set to reject the new 19-point cease-fire deal drafted by the US and Ukraine, suggesting the war will last at least through Christmas, sources told The Post on Tuesday.

The White House has said it is working to secure a deal after Russian President Vladimir Putin showed interest in the original controversial 28-point version of the plan that heavily favored Moscow.

But sources aware of the situation said Russia is expected to reject the fresh 19-point plan and launch a media blitz ripping the US, claiming President Trump and Putin agreed in principle at their Alaska summit to the previous 28-point plan that handed Russia virtually everything it wanted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting in Moscow on Monday. via REUTERS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was already on the offensive Tuesday, reiterating that Moscow will not outright support any plan that deviates from Trump’s original 28-point proposal.

Post sources noted that Russia still even had some issues with the 28-point plan, so why would they be OK with the less favorable latest version?

Lavrov sought to contrast the latest plan with discussions between Trump and Putin at the August summit in Anchorage — implying that the Kremlin came away from the meeting with the idea that Trump had agreed to side with Moscow.

“After Anchorage, when we thought these understandings had already been formalized, there was a long pause. And now the pause has been broken by the introduction of this document. . . A whole series of issues there, of course, require clarification,” Lavrov said.

Firefighters work after a drone hit a multistory residential building during Russia’s night attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. AP

The Kremlin had praised the original plan as a real pathway to peace, with Lavrov adding that any proposal that deviates from that will not have Moscow’s backing.

“If the spirit and letter of Anchorage are erased from the key understandings we have documented, then, of course, the situation will be fundamentally different,” Lavrov warned, according to the Financial Times.
Myroslava Gogadze, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, added on a call with reporters Tuesday, “From Ukrainian perspective, they don’t see this 19-point plan as something that Russia would accept.

“However, the point of this exercise was not exactly to make an agreement but to throw out that 28 point plan and put some Ukrainian interest in that possible negotiation and show that Ukraine is really willing and want to discuss and negotiate at peace in terms of situation on the ground, you have to look at what is going on.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks at an event last week. REUTERS

“From my understanding and what I’m hearing from sources [is that] the American  side is very concerned about possible leaks of that 19-point plan. So I mean, we don’t really have a clear understanding of these 19 points,” the expert said.

The 28-point plan prompted heavy bipartisan and international outcry.

It called on Ukraine to shrink its current army of about 2 million active and reserve personnel to just 600,000 — all while ceding the entire Donbas region, the defensive stronghold that Russia has failed to conquer for more than a decade.

It also demanded Ukraine abandon any hope of joining NATO in exchange for vague security guarantees that would do little to stave off another Russian invasion.

Local residents watch their burning home after a drone hit in Kyiv. AP

Putin has maintained that Ukraine should never be allowed to join NATO, which he described as one of the “root causes” that led him to launch the invasion in 2022.

The original plan, which leaked last week, caused an uproar and forced US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to scramble to amend the proposal.

The new 19-point deal vastly differs from the original, eliminating the cap on Ukraine’s active forces and leaving the door open for the country to join NATO.

The framework came together in recent days following Rubio’s meeting with Ukrainian negotiators in Geneva, with the secretary of state touting it as their most productive meeting yet.

Ukraine agreed to the terms of the peace deal on Tuesday following a meeting with American officials in Abu Dhabi.