{"id":38874,"date":"2025-12-31T09:22:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=38874"},"modified":"2025-12-31T09:22:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:37:46","slug":"the-thorny-issues-that-threaten-to-derail-a-russia-ukraine-peace-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/the-thorny-issues-that-threaten-to-derail-a-russia-ukraine-peace-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘thorny’ issues that threaten to derail a Russia-Ukraine peace deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BBC:<\/strong> Russia, the US and Ukraine agree that a deal on ending almost four years of full-scale war is edging closer but, in the words of President Donald Trump, “one or two very thorny, very tough issues” remain.<\/p>\n

Two of the trickiest issues in Washington’s 20-point plan involve territory and the fate of Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, which is currently occupied by Russia.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin agrees with Trump that negotiations are “at a final stage”, and Zelensky’s next step is to meet European leaders in France on 6 January, but any one of the sticking points could jeopardise a deal.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin has not budged from his maximalist demand for the whole of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas, although Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has offered a compromise.<\/p>\n

Russian forces occupy most of the Luhansk region in the east but little more than 75% of Donetsk, and Putin wants it all, including the remaining “fortress belt” cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.<\/p>\n

“We can’t just withdraw, it’s out of our law,” says Zelensky. “It’s not only the law. People live there, 300,000 people… We can’t lose those people.”<\/p>\n

He has proposed Ukrainian forces pull back from the area to create a demilitarised or free economic zone policed by Ukraine, if the Russians pull back the same distance too. The current line of contact would then be policed by international forces.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to imagine Putin agreeing to any of that, and Russia’s generals have told him they are capturing Ukrainian territory fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC: Russia, the US and Ukraine agree that a deal on ending almost four years of full-scale war is edging closer but, in the words of President Donald Trump, “one or two very thorny, very tough issues” remain. Two of the trickiest issues in Washington’s 20-point plan involve territory and the fate of Europe’s biggest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38874"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38877,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38874\/revisions\/38877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}