President Donald Trump said Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not ready to sign a U.S.-crafted peace plan aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump criticized Zelenskyy after U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators spent three days trying to bridge differences over the proposal. Speaking to reporters before the Kennedy Center Honors, Trump said he was disappointed that, as of a few hours earlier, Zelenskyy had not yet read the document. He added that Zelenskyy’s team liked the plan, that Russia appeared amenable, but that he was unsure where the Ukrainian president stood.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly accepted the White House plan. Last week Putin described parts of the proposal as unworkable, even though an earlier draft was seen as largely favoring Moscow.
Trump has had a mixed relationship with Zelenskyy during his second term, repeatedly calling the war a waste of U.S. taxpayer money and urging Ukraine to consider territorial concessions to end the nearly four-year conflict.
Zelenskyy said Saturday he held a substantive phone call with U.S. officials involved in the Florida talks and received briefings from the delegations. He wrote on social media that Ukraine remains determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace.
Russia welcomed Washington’s new national security strategy, Tass reported, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the document emphasized dialogue over confrontation and expressed hope for constructive cooperation with the U.S. on a settlement in Ukraine. The White House paper says the U.S. seeks improved ties with Russia and lists ending the war as a core interest necessary to reestablish strategic stability.
At the Reagan National Defense Forum, outgoing U.S. Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said talks to end the war are in the final stretch, but that a deal hinges on two main issues: territory, chiefly the Donbas, and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Russia controls most of the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and illegally annexed two southern regions three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia plant, held by Russian forces early in the invasion, is offline and requires steady power to cool six shutdown reactors and stored fuel to prevent a catastrophic accident. Kellogg, who leaves his post in January, did not attend the Florida discussions.
Separately, leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany are scheduled to meet Zelenskyy in London on Monday.
As the Florida talks wrapped up, Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes killed at least four people in Ukraine overnight and on Sunday. A drone strike in Chernihiv region killed one man Saturday night. A combined missile and drone attack on Kremenchuk damaged infrastructure and caused power and water outages in the industrial city that hosts a major oil refinery. Ukrainian officials say Russia appears intent on crippling the power grid to deny civilians heat, light and water during a fourth winter, a tactic Kyiv calls weaponizing the cold. In Kharkiv region, regional prosecutors reported three people killed and 10 wounded by Russian shelling on Sunday.
