(Dec 30): Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he asked Donald Trump for US security guarantees lasting as long as half a century to help deter any future Russian invasion.
Current proposals under discussion as part of a peace plan set out a 15-year term with the possibility for an extension, though “I would like the guarantee to be much longer,” Zelenskiy said on Monday in an audio message to reporters. “We would like to consider the possibility of 30, 40, 50 years and then it will be a historic decision by Trump.”
US security guarantees that had been confirmed by Congress would combine with pledges by nations in the so-called Coalition of the Willing to form an effective protection for Ukraine, Zelenskiy said. European Union membership would also be part of the security arrangements for his country, he said.
“Monitoring the ceasefire — our partners will provide it, technical monitoring and presence. All these details will be in the security guarantees,” Zelenskiy said. Both negotiating teams had agreed on the need for “strong” US security guarantees for Ukraine, he said.
The comments came after Zelenskiy and Trump held talks at the US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday. While Trump said “a lot of progress” was made towards a deal to end Russia’s almost four-year full-scale war on Ukraine, both leaders acknowledged that key issues remained unresolved.
They included the status of territories in the east of Ukraine, and the fate of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that’s occupied by Russia.
See also: Zelenskiy says will meet with Trump, Russia reaches out to US
Zelenskiy said no consensus was reached at his talks with Trump on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand for Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas region that’s partially occupied by Moscow’s troops. There was a lack of clarity over US proposals to create a demilitarised or free economic zone in the area of eastern Ukraine, including on who would control the territory.
Trump said he was confident a deal was “getting a lot closer” though it might take a few weeks to conclude and there’s no set timeline. Zelenskiy said on Sunday the peace plan was “90% agreed”.
Trump said he held “very productive” phone talks with Putin shortly before he met with Zelenskiy. The US and Ukrainian presidents spoke with European leaders after their discussion.
See also: Ukraine and US seek land compromise for peace deal with Putin
Putin and Trump will hold another phone call “very soon”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
Ahead of that call, Putin on Monday held his seventh televised meeting with Russia’s army command since October, highlighting what he described as advances on the battlefield in Ukraine and ordering his forces to continue efforts to seize more territory.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Ukraine attempted to attack a presidential residence in the Novgorod region more than 400km (249 miles) northwest of Moscow overnight with 91 drones, and Russia would retaliate, adding the targets were already selected, according to audio comments published by the state-run Tass news agency. Lavrov said Moscow would reassess its position in the negotiations, but had no intention of withdrawing from talks.
Zelenskiy called the claim the residence was attacked a “new lie”, and warned Russia could be using it as a pretext to prepare an attack on government buildings in Kyiv.
Ukraine seeks a meeting with European partners and Trump in January, Zelenskiy said, followed by a separate meeting with Russian officials “in one format or another”.
The Coalition of the Willing group will meet in early January to discuss its support for Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X on Monday.
After nearly a year of US efforts to end the war failed to yield a deal, Trump had said he would only meet with the Ukrainian and Russian leaders again if an agreement were imminent. So far, the warring sides have been negotiating mainly with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
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Zelenskiy said on Monday that Ukraine “does not care” about the format of negotiations with Russia, but wants Putin to demonstrate his willingness to reach a deal by ceasing attacks on Ukraine.
“These actions do not coincide with the peaceful vocabulary that he uses in dialogue with the US president,” Zelenskiy said. “I told Trump this.”
Putin has continued to press his maximalist demands, including for Ukraine to cede territories in the country’s east that Moscow’s troops have failed to capture in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Ukrainian officials have toiled over the last few weeks to revise a 28-point draft plan originally proposed by the US but seen as overly favourable to Russia. The latest version has 20 points, but Moscow has warned that the plan includes elements it won’t accept, including on the size of Ukraine’s post-war military.
Russia also wants guarantees against future eastward expansion by the Nato military alliance and on Ukraine’s neutral status if it joins the EU, as well as clarity on the removal of sanctions and on hundreds of billions of dollars of Moscow’s frozen state assets in the West, according to a person close to the Kremlin.
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