Ukraine has agreed to limit the size of its armed forces to 800,000 soldiers, Kyiv correspondent for the Financial Times Christopher Miller reported, citing senior officials close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Miller also reported that territorial issues and the nature of security guarantees for Ukraine remain to be agreed between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump.

However, as the Financial Times recalled, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already signalled that Russia will reject the modified peace plan if it does not take into account the long-standing demands Moscow has been putting forward. The 28-point US peace plan presented to Zelensky last week was initially considered to be overly favourable to Russia, and was amended following talks held over the weekend.

Lavrov said on Tuesday that if the plan “erases (…) the key understandings” that Russian leader Vladimir Putin believed had been reached during his August meeting with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, then “the situation will change fundamentally”.

“After Anchorage, when it seemed to us that these understandings had already been formalised, there was a long pause. Now that the pause has been broken by the introduction of this document (…). A whole series of issues obviously requires clarification,” Lavrov said, adding that nothing had yet been formally presented to Russia.

As the FT recalled, in Alaska, Trump said that the United States was prepared to recognise Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and to push Ukraine to withdraw from certain positions on the Donbas front line if Russia ceased hostilities. 

Putin stressed at the time that an agreement would not be possible unless it addressed the “core causes” of the conflict, which he defined as regime change in Kyiv, the end of NATO expansion, and the cessation of Western arms supplies to Ukraine.

In a well-known foreign relations podcast Raport Międzynarodowy prepared for Onet by Witold Jurasz and Zbigniew Parafianowicz, the latter journalist said such a clause in the peace programme would actually suit Ukraine, as a slight decrease in the number of military personnel could help Ukraine’s tough financial situation. 

Source: Financial Times, PAP

Photo: X/@thetoitoi

Tomasz Modrzejewski