Lithuanian foreign minister: 70% of information about Trump's peace plan is baseless

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys has said that reports of US President Donald Trump's peace plan are 70% baseless.

"About 70 percent of the information in the public domain regarding supposed fragments or intentions of the plan from either side, I can confirm, is baseless. There’s testing, [...] trying to check one idea or another, and so on," Kęstutis Budrys said in a comment to the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT.

The broadcaster noted that Budrys and his Baltic counterparts visited the United States last week.

The Lithuanian foreign minister says that during the visit, the Balts advised their American partners to "keep everything on the table" during the negotiations.

"We’re talking about [Ukraine’s] NATO membership, we’re putting NATO membership on the table, which is something we’ve always said should be done. Not just because it’s the easiest, most direct way to ensure Ukraine’s security but simply because by discarding the very idea you weaken any negotiation positions. I got the impression that the US administration won’t be the one to come out with a plan and say, here, read the plan, and now we’re going into negotiations with this plan. That’s not how negotiations work; you have to keep some cards up your sleeve; the negotiation positions need to be formulated strongly," he added.

Budrys considers it important that Russia has not yet demonstrated its readiness to negotiate.

"There are some signals that the sanctions package could be significantly expanded and that military support for Ukraine could be unprecedented if no deal is reached, [and these signals] are real. We’ll see what leverage they choose," Budrys 

Earlier this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that representatives of the Trump team would visit Ukraine this week. CNN, citing sources within the Ukrainian government, reported that US Special Representative for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg will visit Ukraine next week.

On 10 February, The Telegraph reported that Trump’s administration decided to pause the development of a "peace plan" for Ukraine to hold talks with European partners.

The envoy is supposed to present elements of the peace plan at the Munich Security Conference this weekend – although he had previously said he would not do so.

Reuters report that the plan may include continued military support for Ukraine in exchange for access to its rare mineral resources.