KYIV, Ukraine — Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said Thursday that the United States had been sent a revised proposal to end the war in Ukraine as Kyiv and its allies worked to steer President Donald Trump away from his insistence on a peace resolution that would favor Russia.
Merz, speaking in Berlin, said the proposal was sent Wednesday after a phone call between Trump and European leaders. That call included “pretty strong words,” according to Trump, who has shown frustration with the sluggish pace of peace negotiations.
Merz did not detail the contents of the revised proposal but said, “The main issue here is what territorial concessions Ukraine is prepared to make.”
“However, that is a question that must be answered primarily by the Ukrainian president and the Ukrainian people,” Merz told reporters after a meeting with Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO. “We have also made that clear to President Trump.”
Merz and officials from about 30 countries supporting Ukraine were scheduled to talk by videoconference with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Thursday.
But a flurry of recent diplomatic negotiations have failed to produce any breakthroughs to end the war, and Trump has expressed growing impatience.
“We discussed Ukraine in pretty strong words,” Trump said Wednesday after his call with the European leaders, which included Merz, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. Trump did not provide details about what those words were.
“I think we had some little disputes about people, and we’re going to see how it turns out,” he told reporters at the White House.
Trump and Merz said European leaders wanted to meet this weekend with Zelenskyy and U.S. officials, but that the prospects of that meeting depended on the U.S. response to the revised peace proposal.
“We don’t want to be wasting time,” Trump said. “Sometimes you have to let people fight it out.”
As it tried to negotiate peace on more favorable terms, Ukraine was also trying to secure long-term guarantees to deter future Russian aggression and a framework for economic cooperation to rebuild the country after the war, which started nearly four years ago when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine President Held Talks With US Officials, Business Leaders
Zelenskyy held talks with U.S. officials and business leaders Wednesday to discuss those rebuilding efforts. Attendees included U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has been involved in negotiations to end the war; and Larry Fink, CEO of the BlackRock investment firm, who has previously been tapped to help coordinate investment to rebuild Ukraine after the war.
In a video address after his talks with the U.S. officials and Fink, Zelenskyy cautioned that reconstruction would become possible only once the country was secure.
“When there is security,” he said, “everything else follows.”
Ukraine faces an increasingly tough battlefield as Russia tries to strengthen its position in negotiations by mounting offensives along the entire front line.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Thursday that Russia had no timeline for ending the war.
“Some say it would end by spring, some say during 2026 — we are not expending effort on this,” Lavrov said at a roundtable discussion with ambassadors in Moscow.
Russia insists that all its demands be fulfilled before a ceasefire, including ones Ukraine deems unacceptable. The biggest sticking point is the Kremlin’s insistence that Ukraine cede all of the eastern region of the country, known as the Donbas.
Russian forces are close to capturing Pokrovsk, a strategically important city in eastern Ukraine where the two sides have been fighting since July 2024. The city is largely under Russian control, though Ukrainian forces still hold parts of it.
Overnight on Wednesday, Russia bombarded Ukraine’s infrastructure, according to Ukrainian authorities — the latest in a series of attacks on the country’s energy grid — while Ukrainian forces carried out their own drone strikes.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday that its forces had destroyed more than 280 Ukrainian drones, including 32 that were flying toward Moscow. All four airports serving the Russian capital had to halt flights for hours, causing major delays, Russian authorities said.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Maria Varenikova/Laetitia Vancon
c. 2025 The New York Times Company
