Ukraine is preparing to present a revised peace plan to the White House, as it seeks to avoid making territorial concessions to Russia.

Kyiv is set to propose alternatives to the US after President Volodymyr Zelensky again ruled out surrendering land, saying he had “no right” to do so under Ukrainian or international law.

He made the comments as he met European and Nato leaders on Monday, part of a collective push to deter the US from backing a peace deal which includes major concessions for Ukraine, and which allies fear would leave it vulnerable to a future invasion.

Meanwhile, the city of Sumy in north-western Ukraine was left without power overnight after a Russian drone attack.

The region’s governor said more than a dozen drones had hit power infrastructure, the latest in Russia’s nightly attacks. No deaths were reported.

Zelensky’s ongoing diplomatic tour of Europe comes after days of intensive talks between US and Ukrainian negotiators over the weekend, that failed to produce a deal Kyiv could agree to.

Zelensky was due to be briefed on that private summit on Monday by his chief aide Rustem Umerov, who wrote on Telegram that he would feed back details of direct talks between the US and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Ukrainian president told a news conference that his team could send a new proposal to the Americans as soon as Tuesday, AFP news agency reported.

On the subject of surrendering land, Zelensky said: “Russia is insisting that we give up territories, but we don’t want to cede anything.”

He continued: “We have no legal right to do so, under Ukrainian law, our constitution and international law. And we don’t have any moral right either.”

Zelensky has long maintained that any changes to Ukraine’s borders would need to be authorised by a public referendum.

Elsewhere, he told reporters that the initial 28-point plan proposed by the US – and rejected by Kyiv and European leaders as being too favourable to Russia – had been cut down to 20 points, according to Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

He said no “pro-Ukrainian” points had been removed from the draft, though there had also been no “compromise” on the subject of territory.

Zelensky singled out control of the eastern Donbas region and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as being among the “most sensitive” issues.

The original leaked version of the US-backed plan proposed that Ukraine hand over total control of the Donbas to Russia, despite the fact that Kremlin forces have been unable to capture it in full after almost four years of war.

Energy produced at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, would be split between Russia and Ukraine, the draft plan said.

Leaders in Kyiv and across Europe have indicated there has been progress in refining that draft in recent weeks, and have praised the Trump administration for seeking to mediate an end to the fighting.

But Monday’s hastily arranged Downing Street summit – attended by Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – was widely viewed as a show of support for Ukraine as it seeks to resist White House pressure.

No 10 said there had been an agreement that the US-led talks represented a “critical moment” to ramp up support for Ukraine, and repeated calls for a “just and lasting peace… which includes robust security guarantees”.

The nature of those future security guarantees are another open question in the negotiations.

Efforts continue to assemble an international coalition prepared to offer ongoing military support to Kyiv in the event of a peace deal, though it is not yet clear what form that would take.

While the UK and France have proposed deploying international troops in Ukraine, several key defence players in Europe, including Germany and Italy, have expressed scepticism about that idea.

It is also not clear to what extent the US would be willing to underpin any future defence arrangements for Ukraine.

Following talks in London, Zelensky flew to Brussels to meet Nato chief Mark Rutte and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and will meet Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in Italy on Tuesday.

Moscow has also claimed talks with the White House have been constructive, despite little public indication it has moved on any of the goals set out by the Kremlin when it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

On Sunday, Trump indicated that he viewed Zelensky as the main obstacle to securing a peace deal, something he has made a key foreign policy goal and which the president claimed he would be able to achieve rapidly during the 2024 presidential election campaign.

He told reporters that Russia was “fine” with the peace plan outlined to both sides by the US, but that he was a “little disappointed that Zelensky hasn’t read it”.

Almost simultaneously, Zelensky said he was waiting to briefed by his chief negotiator Rustem Umerov who had just taken part in three days of discussions with his US counterparts in Miami.

“Some issues can only be discussed in person,” said Zelensky.

In a village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, a woman receives a small but steady sum each month – not wages, for she has no formal job, but an unconditional cash transfer from the government.

Premila Bhalavi says the money covers medicines, vegetables and her son’s school fees. The sum, 1,500 rupees ($16: £12), may be small, but its effect – predictable income, a sense of control and a taste of independence – is anything but.

Her story is increasingly common. Across India, 118 million adult women in 12 states now receive unconditional cash transfers from their governments, making India the site of one of the world’s largest and least-studied social-policy experiments.

Long accustomed to subsidising grain, fuel and rural jobs, India has stumbled into something more radical: paying adult women simply because they keep households running, bear the burden of unpaid care and form an electorate too large to ignore.

Eligibility filters vary – age thresholds, income caps and exclusions for families with government employees, taxpayers or owners of cars or large plots of land.

“The unconditional cash transfers signal a significant expansion of Indian states’ welfare regimes in favour of women,” Prabha Kotiswaran, a professor of law and social justice at King’s College London, told the BBC.

The transfers range from 1,000-2,500 rupees ($12-$30) a month – meagre sums, worth roughly 5-12% of household income, but regular. With 300 million women now holding bank accounts, transfers have become administratively simple.

Women typically spend the money on household and family needs – children’s education, groceries, cooking gas, medical and emergency expenses, retiring small debts and occasional personal items like gold or small comforts.

What sets India apart from Mexico, Brazil or Indonesia – countries with large conditional cash-transfer schemes – is the absence of conditions: the money arrives whether or not a child attends school or a household falls below the poverty line.

Goa was the first state to launch an unconditional cash transfer scheme to women in 2013. The phenomenon picked up just before the pandemic in 2020, when north-eastern Assam rolled out a scheme for vulnerable women. Since then these transfers have turned into a political juggernaut.

The recent wave of unconditional cash transfers targets adult women, with some states acknowledging their unpaid domestic and care work. Tamil Nadu frames its payments as a “rights grant” while West Bengal’s scheme similarly recognises women’s unpaid contributions.

In other states, the recognition is implicit: policymakers expect women to use the transfers for household and family welfare, say experts.

This focus on women’s economic role has also shaped politics: in 2021, Tamil actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan promised “salaries for housewives”. (His fledgling party lost.) By 2024, pledges of women-focused cash transfers helped deliver victories to political parties in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh.

In the recent elections in Bihar, the political power of cash transfers was on stark display. In the weeks before polling in the country’s poorest state, the government transferred 10,000 rupees ($112; £85) to 7.5 million female bank accounts under a livelihood-generation scheme. Women voted in larger numbers than men, decisively shaping the outcome.

Critics called it blatant vote-buying, but the result was clear: women helped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition secure a landslide victory. Many believe this cash infusion was a reminder of how financial support can be used as political leverage.

Yet Bihar is only one piece of a much larger picture. Across India, unconditional cash transfers are reaching tens of millions of women on a regular basis.

Maharashtra alone promises benefits for 25 million women; Odisha’s scheme reaches 71% of its female voters.

In some policy circles, the schemes are derided as vote-buying freebies. They also put pressure on state finances: 12 states are set to spend around $18bn on such payouts this fiscal year. A report by think-tank PRS Legislative Research notes that half of these states face revenue deficits – this happens when a state borrows to pay regular expenses without creating assets.

But many argue they also reflect a slow recognition of something India’s feminists have argued for decades: the economic value of unpaid domestic and care work.

Women in India spent nearly five hours a day on such work in 2024 – more than three times the time spent by men, according to the latest Time Use Survey. This lopsided burden helps explain India’s stubbornly low female labour-force participation. The cash transfers, at least, acknowledge the imbalance, experts say.

Do they work?

Evidence is still thin but instructive. A 2025 study in Maharashtra found that 30% of eligible women did not register – sometimes because of documentation problems, sometimes out of a sense of self-sufficiency. But among those who did, nearly all controlled their own bank accounts.

A 2023 survey in West Bengal found that 90% operated their accounts themselves and 86% decided how to spend the money. Most used it for food, education and medical costs; hardly transformative, but the regularity offered security and a sense of agency.

More detailed work by Prof Kotiswaran and colleagues shows mixed outcomes.

In Assam, most women spent the money on essentials; many appreciated the dignity it afforded, but few linked it to recognition of unpaid work, and most would still prefer paid jobs.

In Tamil Nadu, women getting the money spoke of peace of mind, reduced marital conflict and newfound confidence – a rare social dividend. In Karnataka, beneficiaries reported eating better, gaining more say in household decisions and wanting higher payments.

Yet only a sliver understood the scheme as compensation for unpaid care work; messaging had not travelled. Even so, women said the money allowed them to question politicians and manage emergencies. Across studies, the majority of women had full control of the cash.

“The evidence shows that the cash transfers are tremendously useful for women to meet their own immediate needs and those of their households. They also restore dignity to women who are otherwise financially dependent on their husbands for every minor expense,” Prof Kotiswaran says.

Importantly, none of the surveys finds evidence that the money discourages women from seeking paid work or entrench gender roles – the two big feminist fears, according to a report by Prof Kotiswaran along with Gale Andrew and Madhusree Jana.

Nor have they reduced women’s unpaid workload, the researchers find. They do, however, strengthen financial autonomy and modestly strengthen bargaining power. They are neither panacea nor poison: they are useful but limited tools, operating in a patriarchal society where cash alone cannot undo structural inequities.

What next?

The emerging research offers clear hints.

Eligibility rules should be simplified, especially for women doing heavy unpaid care work. Transfers should remain unconditional and independent of marital status.

But messaging should emphasise women’s rights and the value of unpaid work, and financial-literacy efforts must deepen, researchers say. And cash transfers cannot substitute for employment opportunities; many women say what they really want is work that pays and respect that endures.

“If the transfers are coupled with messaging on the recognition of women’s unpaid work, they could potentially disrupt the gendered division of labour when paid employment opportunities become available,” says Prof Kotiswaran.

India’s quiet cash transfers revolution is still in its early chapters. But it already shows that small, regular sums – paid directly to women – can shift power in subtle, significant ways.

Whether this becomes a path to empowerment or merely a new form of political patronage will depend on what India chooses to build around the money.