Zelenskyy says Ukraine has impossible choice as Trump pushes plan to end war
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy looks into the camera while delivering a video address to the nation in Kyiv. Picture: Press Service Of The President Of Ukraine/AP
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine faces one of the most difficult moments in its history, after Donald Trump demanded Kyiv accepts within days a US-backed "peace plan" that would force it to give up territory to Russia and make other painful concessions.
Trump confirmed on Friday morning that next Thursday — Thanksgiving in the US — would be an “acceptable” deadline for Zelenskyy to sign the deal, which European and Ukrainian officials have said amounts to a “capitulation”.
In a sombre 10-minute speech outside his presidential palace, Zelenskyy said his country had an impossible choice. It could keep its national dignity or risk losing a major partner in the shape of a US administration apparently determined to end the conflict on Moscow’s brutal terms.
“Now the pressure on Ukraine is one of the heaviest,” he said. Its options included agreeing to Trump’s 28-point proposal or “an extremely difficult winter”, which has already seen Russia destroy much of the country’s energy infrastructure, with millions of people left without heating and in the dark.
Agreeing to the US-Russian plan could leave Ukraine “without freedom, dignity and justice”, he said. It would also mean believing “someone who has already attacked us twice”, he said, adding that he would never sacrifice Ukraine’s interests or go against its constitution. “We did not betray Ukraine then [in 2022], and we will not do so now,” he declared.
Speaking on Fox radio, Trump said he thought Thursday was an “appropriate time” for Zelenskyy to sign the deal, and said he believed Ukraine could not prevent Russia’s army from taking the Donbas territories by force. The US president is pursuing an “aggressive timeline” to end the conflict, US officials indicated, and intends to heap unprecedented pressure on Kyiv.
Trump is also threatening to cut vital intelligence sharing and weapons supplies for Ukraine if it fails to agree, reports suggest. On Friday, European leaders pushed back on the proposal, which Ukrainian politicians say is “absurd”.
The 28-point plan envisages Ukraine giving up the eastern Donbas region — including areas it currently controls — and shrinking the size of its army. It rules out the deployment of European peacekeepers and says Kyiv must relinquish long-range weapons and not join Nato.
On Friday, Zelenskyy spoke by telephone with the US vice-president, JD Vance, who has previously pressured Ukraine to make a deal with Russia to end the war as quickly as possible.
Following the hour-long call, Zelenskyy gave a cautious statement that the two sides had “managed to cover a lot of details of the American side’s proposals for ending the war, and we’re working to make the path forward dignified and truly effective for achieving a lasting peace”.
Both countries appointed their national security advisers to continue negotiations on the text of the draft peace plan.
Western allies including France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and Britain’s Keir Starmer spoke to Zelenskyy on Friday in a show of solidarity. They reaffirmed their support for Kyiv and said any agreement to end the conflict had to be genuinely fair and take into account Ukraine’s own red lines.
In contrast to the Trump proposal, which calls for Ukraine to abandon several major cities, they said the existing line of contact should be the “starting point” for territorial discussions. The text also had to take into account Europe and Ukraine’s long-term interests, they stressed.
The British prime minister urged a “just and lasting peace”. He said: “That’s what the president of America wants. That’s what we all want, and so we need to work from where we are to that end. But the principle that Ukraine must determine its future under its sovereignty is a fundamental principle.”Â
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, warned that a peace deal that rewarded invasion would set a “very dangerous” global precedent. “If you just give in to the aggression, then you invite more aggression,” she said, adding that countries other than Russia could develop “an appetite” for neighbouring territory.
In his address, Zelenskyy paid tribute to Ukrainians who had bravely endured “almost four years of full-scale invasion”. He hinted that despite their daily heroism, compromises may need to be made. “Our people really, really want this war to end. We are, of course, strong, but even the strongest metal can break. Don’t forget that,” he declared.
Zelenskyy said he would work calmly and constructively with Washington over its plan, “offering alternatives”. It was drafted by Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin’s envoy, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special representative, during a meeting in Miami. Europe and Ukraine were excluded from discussions.
Ukraine’s president said he was working to ensure “national interests” were respected. “Now practically every hour there are meetings, phone calls and work on issues that could change a lot,” he wrote on Telegram. He said his country welcomed US diplomatic efforts but wanted “real peace that would not be broken by a third [Russian] invasion”.
Ukrainian government insiders believe that relations between Kyiv and Washington have improved dramatically since February, when Trump and Vance berated Zelenskyy and tossed him out of the Oval Office. Kyiv faces the unappealing prospect of provoking Trump’s wrath once again if it fails to swiftly accept his Moscow-drafted deal.
In the immediate aftermath of the White House row, Trump briefly suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv, cutting off a crucial channel of battlefield information for Ukraine’s frontline units. The US has stopped supplying Ukraine with direct military aid, but still provides advanced weapons systems to Kyiv under the UN’s prioritised Ukraine requirements list (Purl) initiative, in which European partners pay for them.
A delegation of senior US military officials led by the army secretary, Dan Driscoll, held talks with Zelenskyy on Thursday in Kyiv. Trump has named Driscoll — Vance’s friend and former classmate — as his newest “special representative”. The group of American generals was likely to fly to Moscow at the end of next week to discuss the “peace plan” with the Kremlin, US sources said.
Putin confirmed on Friday that Moscow had recieved a copy of the US plan, which he said could “lay the foundation” for an end to the war. “I believe that it could lay the foundation for a final peace settlement,” he said.
A person close to the Kremlin said that while Putin “liked” the overall contours of the peace proposal, it fell short of other Kremlin demands. These include a legally binding guarantee that Nato will not expand further east, as well as enshrining Ukraine’s neutral status in its constitution. As for potential EU membership, the source said Moscow would only consider it if it excluded a military component, citing Austria’s model of neutrality as an example.
US officials have said the text was hammered out after consultations with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s national security and defence council secretary, and a close Zelenskyy ally. Umerov — a former defence minister — made several modifications, they added. He denied this, saying Kyiv would not accept terms that violated its sovereignty.
The reaction from Ukrainian civil society has been overwhelmingly negative. People have variously dismissed the plan as one-sided and tantamount to Ukraine’s abject surrender. It comes as Zelenskyy is under immense pressure at home after a corruption scandal involving his former business partner and at least two of his ministers.
The plan also failed to win over senior European commentators. Constanze Stelzenmüller of the Brookings Institute described its drafting as “appalling” and said its substance was “outrageous”. If enacted, it would lead to Russia becoming the “apex predator in Europe”, she observed. “Truly marks the complete enshittification of diplomacy,” she added on X.
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