Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was up to Russia to end its invasion, ahead of high-stakes talks on Monday with US counterpart Donald Trump, who is pressuring Ukraine to give up Crimea and abandon its NATO ambitions.
The comments came hours before Zelensky and European leaders were scheduled to meet Trump in Washington, a follow-up to a summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on Friday that failed to produce a ceasefire.
Trump, who dropped his insistence on a ceasefire in favor of a final peace deal after meeting Putin, said late Sunday that Zelensky could end the three-and-a-half-year war “almost immediately, if he wants to.”
“Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”, Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Announcing that he had landed in Washington, Zelensky wrote later: “Russia must end this war, which it itself started.”
“Ukrainians are fighting for their land, their independence,” he said, adding that he hoped “that our joint strength with America, with our European friends, will force Russia into a real peace.”
Trump and Zelensky are expected to meet one-on-one before being joined by the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Finland, as well as NATO chief Mark Rutte and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, according to the White House.
Ahead of Monday’s meeting, China called for “all parties” to agree to peace “as soon as possible.”
It will be the first time Zelensky visits Washington since a bust-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in February, when the two men berated the Ukrainian leader for being “ungrateful.”
Russia kept up its attacks on Ukraine ahead of the new talks, firing at least 140 drones and four ballistic missiles at the country between late Sunday and early Monday, the Ukrainian air force said.
A Russian drone attack on a five-story apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv just before dawn killed at least seven people, authorities said.
Ukrainian shelling attacks in the Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson and Donetsk regions meanwhile killed two people, Moscow-installed authorities said.
– Security guarantees –
Since the Oval Office row with Zelensky in February, Trump has grown more critical of Putin and shown some signs of frustration as Russia repeatedly stalled on peace talks.
But Washington has not placed extra sanctions on Moscow, and the lavish welcome offered to Putin in Alaska on his first visit to the West since he invaded Ukraine in 2022 was seen as a diplomatic coup for Russia.
Speaking in Brussels on the eve of his visit to the United States, Zelensky said he was keen to hear more about what Putin and Trump discussed in Alaska.
He also hailed Washington’s offer of security guarantees to Ukraine as “historic.”
Trump said he spoke to Putin about the possibility of a collective defense guarantee for Ukraine similar to the one in place for NATO members.
The promise would be outside of the framework of the Western military alliance that Ukraine wants to join and which is seen as an existential threat by Russia.
– Discussion on land –
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said Moscow had made “some concessions” regarding five Ukrainian regions that Russia now fully or partially controls, and that there was an “important discussion with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there.”
“That discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday,” he told CNN, without giving details.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum denounced as a sham by Kyiv and the West, and did the same in 2022 in four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — even though its forces have not fully captured them.
A source briefed on a phone call between Trump and European leaders on Saturday told AFP that the US leader was “inclined to support” a Russian demand to be given territory it had not yet captured in the Donbas, an area that includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and that has seen the deadliest battles of the war.
In exchange, Moscow would agree to “freeze” the front line in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, regions where Russian forces hold swathes of territory but not the regional capitals, the source cited Trump as saying.
Russia had until now insisted that Ukraine pull its forces from all four regions as a precondition to any deal.
Zelensky has said he is constitutionally bound not to give away any Ukrainian territory.
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© Agence France-Presse
