PRESIDENT Zelensky will tomorrow present a fresh peace plan to Donald Trump following today’s talks with his European allies in London.
The Ukrainian has again rejected handing land to Putin and also made a plea to his allies for the cash needed to buy American weapons.
Zelensky was at 10 Downing Street to meet Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Germany on Monday, who rallied around him in the face of Trump’s shaky-looking support.
They gathered amid American efforts to hurry a peace deal over the line – which have reached a “critical stage”, according to Starmer.
After the US and Russia produced a 28-point peace deal last month, European leaders swiftly set to work crafting a more balanced counter proposal.
Talks have also been ongoing between the US and Ukraine in a bid to agree on a revised version – which was reportedly presented to Putin last week.
On Sunday, Trump accused Zelensky of not having even read the latest version of the text, which has been kept tightly under wraps, though Ukrainian officials denied this.
Trump said: “Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelensky’s fine with it. His people love it, but he hasn’t read it.”
After talks with Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, Zelensky confirmed they had been working on a further update to the 20-point proposal.
He said the revision could be ready for delivery to Trump as early as Tuesday evening.
On Sunday, the White House said a peace deal was “really close” and was stuck on just two points: the fate of the Ukraine’s Donbas region and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Special Envoy Keith Kellog said: “If we get those two issues settled, I think the rest of the things will work out fairly well.”
Zelensky too signaled the demands for Ukraine to hand over land to Russia, as featured in the initial proposition, remained a problem.
He said today: “There are visions of the US, Russia and Ukraine – and we don’t have a unified view on Donbas.
“There is one question I, and all Ukrainians, want to get an answer to: if Russia again starts the war, what will our partners do?”
And he later made clear that land concessions would not feature in the proposition handed over tomorrow.
He said: “Do we envision ceding territories? We have no legal right to do so, under Ukrainian law, our constitution and international law. And we don’t have any moral right either.
“Russia is insisting that we give up territories, but we don’t want to cede anything. We are fighting for that, as you well know.
“There are difficult problems concerning the territories and so far there has been no compromise.”
Zelensky previously said the sides were waiting for in-person talks with Trump to tackle the thorny issue for security reasons.
Following his London meetings, Zelensky travelled to Brussels for talks with heads of Nato and the European Commission – and is later due to head to Italy.
Zelensky said that Ukrainian and European officials “are going to work on these 20 points” received from the US side in order to produce a counter proposal.
Trump later shared an article branding Europeans as “impotent”.
Reposting a New York Post opinion piece onto Truth Social, he picked out the headline: “Impotent Europeans can only fume as Trump rightly sidelines them from Ukraine deal”.
Zelensky also revealed on Monday that Ukraine is short by around £600million of the money needed to buy the US weapons it had planned to purchase this year.
He reiterated that, by next year, Ukraine would need about $11.3billion for the PURL program – which involves purchases of U.S. weapons with European money.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/15610267/zelensky-presents-peace-deal-trump-refuses-land/
