The US has signalled to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Ukraine must accept a US drafted framework to end the conflict with Russia that proposes Kyiv giving up territory and some weapons, two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. 

The sources, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters the proposals included cutting the size of Ukraine's armed forces, among other things. 

Washington wants Kyiv to accept the main points, they said. Such a plan would represent a major setback for Kyiv as it faces further Russian territorial gains in eastern Ukraine and with Zelenskyy tackling a corruption scandal, which on Wednesday saw parliament dismiss the energy and justice ministers. The White House declined to comment on the matter. 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X that Washington "will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.

"Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas. And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions," Rubio said. 

A senior Ukrainian official earlier told Reuters that Kyiv had received "signals" about a set of US proposals to end the conflict that Washington has discussed with Russia. Ukraine has had no role in preparing the proposals, the source said.

Calls for Chinese involvement

A former French diplomat has insisted that a 12-point peace proposal made by China in 2023 should also be brought to the table. 

Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, France's ambassador to China from 2014-17, told the South China Morning Post that Europe should speak to China about the Ukraine conflict which he said "is fracturing the dialogue between two parts of the world."

He said: "It shouldn't prevent us from having a stronger dialogue with China and finding out ways and means to cooperate as we did in the past, to find out shared interests and common ground to work together.

"The major challenge at the moment is to get rid of this question of Ukraine. We need peace in Ukraine."

China has long argued that a ceasefire and peace talks are the only path to a resolution of the conflict.

Zelenskyy, who was holding talks in Türkiye on Wednesday with President Tayyip Erdogan, is due to meet US Army officials in Kyiv on Thursday. In comments on Telegram, Zelenskyy did not mention Washington's framework but called for effective US leadership to help bring the more than three-and-a-half-year-old conflict to an end.

"The main thing for stopping the bloodshed and achieving lasting peace is that we work in coordination with all our partners and that American leadership remains effective, strong," Zelenskyy wrote after meeting Erdogan in Ankara.

Zelenskyy said only the United States and US President Donald Trump "have sufficient strength for the war to finally come to an end."

The Ukrainian president also said Erdogan had proposed different formats for talks "and it is important for us that Türkiye is ready to provide the necessary platform."

Signs of a renewed push to end the conflict triggered the biggest jump in Ukraine's government bond prices in months on Wednesday. 

No face-to-face talks have taken place between Kyiv and Moscow since a meeting in Istanbul in July and Russian forces have pressed on with Moscow's nearly four-year-old conflict in Ukraine, killing 25 people in strikes overnight. 

Efforts to revive peace negotiations appear to be gaining momentum, although Moscow has shown no sign of changing its terms for ending the conflict. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long demanded Kyiv renounce plans to join the US-led NATO military alliance and withdraw its troops from four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia.

Moscow has given no indication that it has dropped any of those demands and Ukraine says it will not accept them. Russian forces control about 19 percent of Ukrainian territory and are grinding forwards, while carrying out frequent attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure as winter approaches. 

Türkiye, a NATO member that has remained close to both Kyiv and Moscow, hosted an initial round of peace talks in the early weeks of the conflict in 2022, the only such talks until this year when Trump launched a new bid to end the fighting.