Fox News: The U.S. has created a three-step plan for Ukraine to end the war, which includes holding elections.

The USA and Russia are proposing a three-stage peace plan to end the Russian-Ukrainian war. The plan includes a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine, and only then the signing of a final peace agreement.

Fox News journalist Jackie Heinrich reported this, citing foreign diplomatic sources close to the negotiations in Saudi Arabia.

Several foreign diplomatic sources informed Fox that the USA and Russia consider holding new elections in Ukraine a key condition for the success of the resolution process, she writes on social media platform X.

"This point will undoubtedly spark controversy, as Russia does not conduct genuine elections, and Ukrainians are not receptive to the prospect of installing a pro-Russian puppet president," the journalist notes.

"Ukraine also disputes the notion that Zelensky's popularity is too low to win reelection even without Russian interference, citing his refusal to sign the (proposed by the USA) agreement in Munich," Heinrich adds.

According to her, the White House will soon provide a comment on this matter.

Heinrich also cites information from "numerous" foreign diplomatic sources from the Ukrainian side.

"Putin assesses the likelihood of electing a puppet president as quite high and is convinced that any candidate other than the current President of Ukraine would be more flexible and willing to negotiate and make concessions. In turn, Trump is ready to accept any election outcome, including the possibility of electing a pro-Russian puppet. Both Trump and Putin believe the current President of Ukraine has low chances of being reelected," the post states.

A similar statement comes from German Member of the European Parliament Sergey Lagodinsky:

"According to my sources, Trump's proposal consists of three stages:

1) ceasefire;

2) ELECTIONS in Ukraine;

3) signing of a final agreement," he writes in his account on X.

"This fully meets all of Putin's wishes. Moreover, the electoral aspect is a gift from Trump to Putin. Putin despises Zelensky because he has thwarted his plans to conquer Ukraine. He dreams of having a pro-Russian candidate after the exhausting war. For Trump, it would also be convenient to have a president who would be so weak that he would hand over all Ukrainian resources," the MEP believes.

Background. Recall that following the negotiations in Riyadh, Marco Rubio explained how the process would develop further, naming three components of the next stage.

When asked about lifting sanctions on Russia, Rubio stated that there is still a long way to go before discussing this, and today it was only agreed to start the negotiation process.

For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated three agreements reached. He mentioned that the delegations of Russia and the USA reached mutual understanding on various issues, but this does not mean that their positions have converged.