Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Friday that Ukraine risked losing its dignity and freedom — or Washington’s backing — over a US peace plan that endorses key Russian demands, a proposal Donald Trump said Kyiv should accept within a week.
The US president told Fox News Radio he believed Thursday was an appropriate deadline for Kyiv to accept the plan, confirming what two sources told Reuters.
Trump later told reporters that time was short, given the approaching winter and the need to end the bloodshed and that Zelensky would have to approve the plan.
“He’ll have to like it, and if he doesn’t like it, then you know, they should just keep fighting, I guess,” he said.
“At some point, he’s going to have to accept something he hasn’t accepted,” Trump said.
Recalling his fractious February meeting with Zelensky, Trump added: “You remember right in the Oval Office, not so long ago, I said, ‘You don’t have the cards.'”
Washington’s 28-point plan calls on Ukraine to cede territory, accept limits to its military and renounce ambitions to join NATO. It also contains some proposals Moscow may object to and requires its forces to pull back from some areas they have captured, according to a draft seen by Reuters.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who has previously refused to budge on Russia’s key territorial and security demands, said on Friday the US plan could be the basis of a final resolution of the nearly four-year-old conflict. He said Kyiv was against the plan but neither it nor its European allies understood the reality of Russian advances in Ukraine.
