US allies express alarm at Trump’s plan to let Russia keep most of the land it seized from Ukraine

Some US allies are highly alarmed by the framework the Trump administration is pushing to end the Ukraine war and Europeans are bracing for the outcomes of another round of high-level talks between the US and Russia, multiple diplomatic sources told CNN.

Some US allies are highly alarmed by the framework the Trump administration is pushing to end the Ukraine war and Europeans are bracing for the outcome of another round of high-level talks between the US and Russia, multiple diplomatic sources told CNN. The administration’s framework, presented in Paris last week, proposes significant sacrifices from Kyiv, including US de-facto recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and Ukraine ceding large swaths of territory to Russia, according to an official familiar. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called “to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.” Asked what concessions Russia was offering on Thursday, Trump replied, “stopping the war,” suggesting that not “taking the whole country” is a “pretty big concession.” Multiple allied diplomats said they are rattled by what the Trump administration is proposing, because they believe such a framework sends a dangerous message to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, that illegal conquest could be rewarded, multiple diplomats said. “This is about the fundamental principles of international law. This is very much about our own existence and the weakening of any safeguards that my or other countries have for our own independence,” an Eastern European diplomat told CNN. They and other sources spoke on background to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. “If one country in Europe is currently under pressure or being forced to give up parts of its own legal territory, territory that has been that has been recognized as part of Ukraine … if one country in Europe is forced to do that, no country in Europe or elsewhere can feel safe, NATO or no NATO,” the diplomat said.