US Special Envoy to Ukraine retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg will meet with leaders of the coalition of the willing in London on April 23 to present President Donald Trump’s “final offer” in a peace deal for Ukraine, but Washington will “walk away” if no agreement is reached, US official have said.

The crucial meeting brings the haggling over terms of a ceasefire to a head. As bne IntelliNews reported, Trump has done a deal with Putin and is now trying to get Ukraine and the EU on board. That will be hard, as the terms of the proposed deal are very favourable to Russia and give Ukraine little.

Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) tried to deflect the deal talks, saying on April 22 that it would prefer to discuss the 30-day ceasefire proposed by the Trump administration instead. In response Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, who have been leading the talks with Russia, cancelled their attendance at the London meeting, leaving Kellogg to take the lead.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy advisor, confirmed that Witkoff is due in Moscow later this week for his fourth meeting with Putin following the London gathering today.

The one-page document the US presented Ukrainian officials in Paris last week outlining the US terms of the deal describes this as the "final offer." Trump has brought almost no pressure on Russia to moderate its demands, and now appears to be bullying the EU and Kyiv into accepting the terms of its deal with Putin. A source close to the Ukrainian government told Axios that Kyiv sees the proposal as “highly biased towards Russia.”

"The proposal says very clearly what tangible gains Russia gets, but only vaguely and generally says what Ukraine is going to get,” Axios reports.

Putin has been preparing the ground for the April 23 meeting and playing to the Trump administration to paint himself in a positive light ahead of the crucial meeting.

He called a 30-hour ceasefire over the Easter weekend to mirror the Trump’s proposal of a 30-day ceasefire that was unconditionally accepted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but failed after conditions, like introducing a robust monitoring system demanded by Putin, were not implemented.

And on April 22 Putin suggested that he was willing to freeze the conflict along the current line of contact and also said he was ready for direct talks between himself and Zelenskiy. Freezing the line would mean conceding some of Russia’s claims to control over the four regions it annexed in 2023, which it has never been able to completely control. As bne IntelliNews reported last autumn, the Kremlin suggested there was “limited wiggle room” on where the borders of these territories are drawn in any ceasefire deal.

The US has also suggested that it would formally recognise the Crimea peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, as Russian sovereign territory, which is new. The proposal also suggests the US is demanding sweeping sanctions relief on Russia, which the EU has previously said is not possible until the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) quit Ukraine’s territory entirely.

What Russia gets:

• Formal de jure recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea.
• De facto acceptance of Russia’s occupation of parts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
• Ukraine agrees not to join Nato, though EU membership remains possible.
• Sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014 would be lifted.
• Expanded US-Ukraine economic ties, especially in energy and industry.

What Ukraine gets:

• Vague security guarantees from select European and non-European states, with no US involvement.
• Restoration of a small Russian-occupied area in Kharkiv oblast.
• Free navigation on the Dnieper River in contested areas.
• Reconstruction aid and compensation, though funding sources are unspecified.

Additional US conditions:

• The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant (ZNPP) remains Ukrainian but will be operated by the US, supplying power to both Ukraine and Russia.
• A harsh US-Ukraine minerals agreement is expected to be signed this week.