President Donald Trump on Sunday said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “isn’t ready” to sign a U.S.-authored peace proposal intended to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump criticized Zelenskyy after U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators spent three days trying to narrow differences over the proposal. Speaking to reporters before the Kennedy Center Honors, Trump said he was “a little bit disappointed” that, as of a few hours earlier, Zelenskyy “hasn’t yet read the proposal.” He added, “His people love it, but he hasn’t,” and suggested Russia was “fine with it,” while he was unsure about Zelenskyy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly approved the White House plan; last week Putin called parts of the proposal unworkable, despite an original draft that largely favored 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 cede territory to end the nearly four-year conflict.
Zelenskyy said Saturday he had a “substantive phone call” with U.S. officials involved in the Florida talks and received an update from the delegations. “Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” he wrote on social media.
Russia welcomed the administration’s new national security strategy in comments carried by Tass. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the document, which outlines core foreign policy interests, contained statements “against confrontation and in favour of dialogue,” and expressed hope for “further constructive cooperation with Washington on the Ukrainian settlement.”
The White House paper said the U.S. seeks to improve ties with Russia and that ending the war is a core interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.” At the Reagan National Defense Forum, outgoing U.S. Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said efforts to end the war were in “the last 10 metres,” but that a deal hinges on two issues: territory, primarily the Donbas, and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russia controls most of the Donbas — its name for Donetsk and Luhansk regions — and illegally annexed two southern regions three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia plant, under Russian control since early in the invasion, is not in service and requires reliable power to cool six shutdown reactors and spent fuel to prevent catastrophic incidents. Kellogg, who leaves his post in January, did not attend the Florida talks.
Separately, officials said leaders of the U.K., France and Germany would meet Zelenskyy in London on Monday.
As the Florida talks concluded, Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes overnight and Sunday killed at least four people in Ukraine. A drone attack killed a man in Chernihiv region Saturday night, and a combined missile and drone strike on Kremenchuk damaged infrastructure, causing power and water outages in the industrial city that hosts a major oil refinery. Ukrainian officials say Russia is attempting to cripple the power grid to deny civilians heat, light and water during a fourth winter, a tactic Kyiv calls “weaponizing” the cold.
Three people were killed and 10 wounded Sunday in Russian shelling of Kharkiv region, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.
