Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky while meeting with so-called 'coalition of the willing' European leaders in London on Monday definitively ruled out that his country will agree to cede territory as part of a peace deal.
He specified that the question of territorial compromise is why he has not reached agreement on Donald Trump's peace deal. "There are visions of the US, Russia and Ukraine – and we don’t have a unified view on Donbas," Zelensky told Bloomberg.
Zelensky also wants much firmer security guarantees in the Washington plan. "There is one question I — and all Ukrainians — want to get an answer to: if Russia again starts a war, what will our partners do," he said shortly before meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Friedrich Merz.
But the US peace plan hinges precisely on offering some level of significant territorial compromise, given that Moscow - which has the clear upper hand militarily - considers anything less to be an automatic non-starter not worth even discussing.
President Trump has recently declared that if Zelensky rejects the US plan, he should be ready to fight Russia alone and with much less Washington help. But is Trump ready to cut off weapons supplies altogether?
Likely he'll be content with Europe buying them, and still transferring them to Kiev. But all of this could mean that US intel sharing is finally cut off.
Meanwhile Trump has belittled 'weak' Europe for seeking to scrap together a counter-plan:
President Trump mocked Europe's involvement on Monday, sharing an opinion piece which praises him for sideling "impotent Europeans" from the Ukraine peace talks. Trump has also criticized Zelensky, accusing him of not reading the latest peace proposals.
As for the US peace plan, it appears to have been primarily drafted by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev - but so far the Zelensky government has complained that it's being cut out of the process.
Zelensky has throughout the war consistently rejected any proposal which features territorial concessions. He is supported especially be Ukrainian hardliners, both in the military and in parliament.
Now he's seeking to get European leaders to back him up, and they appear to be doing so. This is all a recipe for keeping the endless war going with no end in sight, and the proxy conflict nature of it continues to get dangerously out of hand.
Time For Ukraine To Have Elections As It's 'Not A Democracy Anymore': Trump
President Donald Trump didn't hold back in a new televised interview with Politico wherein he weighed in on the state of the Ukraine war and how President Zelensky is conducting himself.
Given Zelensky has put the brakes on the Trump-proposed pace plan by definitively rejectingthe territorial concessions aspects to the document, the US president's assessment was blunt and highly critical, going so far as to basically call Ukraine not a democracy. "They haven’t had an election in a long time," Trump said. "You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it's not a democracy anymore."
At this part of the interview the discussion focused on whether Ukraine was still justified at this point in delaying elections over martial law. Trump's conclusions is that no, it's been far too long since all elections were canceled by Zelensky with the backing of parliament, and thus he questioned the country's democratic credentials.
Asked directly if Ukraine should go to the polls, Trump responded "it’s time" while explaining it is "an important time to hold an election. He said that amid years of the war with Russia "they’re using war not to hold an election" - but that Ukrainians "should have that choice."
Trump's words here will serve to add pressure as Zelensky's office is already front and center in a wide-ranging energy corruption scandal, which has seen top ministers, aides, and officials forced out. Trump further assessed:
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