US open to recognizing Crimea as Russian in Ukraine peace deal

By Alberto Nardelli, Alex Wickham and Daryna Krasnolutska

The US is prepared to recognize Russian control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea as part of a broader peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv, according to people familiar with the matter.

The potential concession is the latest signal that President Donald Trump is eager to cement a ceasefire deal, and comes as he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested on Friday that the administration is prepared to move on from its peace-brokering efforts unless progress is made quickly.

Crimea was taken by the Kremlin in 2014 following an invasion and subsequent referendum held under occupation, and the international community has resisted recognizing the peninsula as Russian to avoid legitimizing the illegal annexation.

Doing so risks undermining international laws and treaties prohibiting the taking of land through use of force. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he will not cede territory to Moscow.

But the move would be a boon for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has long sought international recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea. Putin so far has refused to agree to Trump’s proposal for a broad peace deal.

The people said a final decision on the matter hadn’t yet been taken. The White House and State Department did not respond to a request for comment. A US official familiar with the negotiations, asked about the possibility of recognizing Crimea, declined to comment on the details of the talks.

The US presented allies with proposals to enable a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in Paris on Thursday, including an outline of terms to end the fighting and ease sanctions on Moscow in the event of a lasting ceasefire, Bloomberg reported earlier.

The proposal would by and large freeze the frontline, with most other Ukrainian territory now occupied by Russia effectively remaining under Moscow’s control, said the people. Kyiv’s aspirations of joining NATO would also be off the table. The people declined to provide further specifics, citing the confidential nature of the discussions.

The Paris talks included a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and US envoy Steve Witkoff, as well as discussions among Rubio and national security advisers and negotiators from France, Germany, the UK and Ukraine.

The allies will gather again in London next week to follow up on their discussions. 

Still, Trump signaled impatience Friday at the White House, saying that while he was hopeful both sides would agree to move forward on a ceasefire, the US was willing to walk away if he sensed either side lacked dedication to the process.

“If for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, you’re foolish,” Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office. “You’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going to just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Trump’s proposal will need to be further socialized across Europe and with Ukraine, which could balk at the concessions Trump has outlined. The US president has also previously said other Ukrainian ambitions — like joining the NATO alliance — would not be possible.

One of the officials said the US plans, which need to be further discussed with Kyiv, wouldn’t amount to a definitive settlement, and that European allies wouldn’t recognize any occupied territories as Russian. The officials stressed that talks would be moot if the Kremlin didn’t agree to stop the fighting, and that providing Ukraine with security guarantees to ensure that a deal holds up were also an essential part of any agreement.

On Friday, Rubio said that security guarantees aren’t an “illegitimate desire” on Ukraine’s part, but that negotiators so far haven’t drilled down to that level of specificity.

“Every sovereign nation on Earth has a right to defend itself,” he said.

Kyiv has already agreed to a ceasefire and its position is that Moscow needs to agree to one as well before discussing other matters, a person familiar with the matter said. In Paris, the Ukrainian delegation’s task was to discuss how any ceasefire would be monitored, as well as a peacekeeping contingent, the person said.

Russia has continued to bomb Ukrainian cities after balking at a proposed partial truce covering the Black Sea. The Kremlin said a separate, 30-day partial truce covering energy infrastructure ended on Friday. A week ago, Russian forces fired ballistic missiles, including one equipped with cluster munitions, at Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, killing 35 people.

The Paris talks also built on France-UK efforts to form a postwar “reassurance force” in Ukraine, as well as plans to ensure that Kyiv has an adequately resourced and manned military as part of a package of security guarantees.

Officials in Paris and London are hoping that that proposal would demonstrate that Europe is serious about committing its own resources to Ukraine’s postwar future, and persuade Trump to provide a backstop to those guarantees.

Lifting sanctions while Russia continues to occupy large areas of Ukraine could prove problematic for several of Kyiv’s allies. Removing European Union restrictions, including unfreezing immobilized assets, requires the backing of all member states.

Witkoff, who has met Putin three times, told Fox News this week that the key to an overall agreement revolves around “five territories,” without providing more details. Russia insists that its military seizure of parts of Ukraine since 2014, including the Crimean peninsula and large areas of four regions — Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Luhansk and Donetsk — must be recognized in any accord.

Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Thursday, Zelenskyy lashed out at Witkoff for “adopting Russian strategy,” and said that Trump’s envoy had no “mandate to discuss Ukrainian territories, because these territories belong to our people.”

“We do not discuss territories until the ceasefire,” the Ukrainian president said. “We will never consider Ukrainian lands as Russian.”