The President of the United States, Donald Trump, stated that the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, would be “ready” to sign a peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine and that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is the one who would be preventing a ceasefire.
The Republican president made the comments in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday (14). “We need President Zelensky to agree to this,” Trump said of the peace deal.
“I think he [Putin] is ready to make a deal. I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal,” Trump said. Asked by Reuters what was preventing a deal, the American president replied: “Zelensky.”
Trump was also asked about the possibility of the United States sharing intelligence information as a security guarantee to protect Ukraine and responded: “If we can do something, we will help. They are losing 30,000 troops a month, between them and Russia. Now, Europe is going to help us with that.”
The Russian dictatorship agreed with Trump’s opinion that Zelensky was preventing an agreement. “On this we can agree. That is effectively the case,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said in a telephone news conference.
“The situation is getting worse every day for the Kiev regime. We have already said that. And the window for decision-making is closing,” said the spokesman, according to information from the EFE agency. Zelensky has not yet commented on Trump’s comments.
In November, the American president proposed a 28-point peace plan, including the international recognition of the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Lugansk and Donetsk as Russian territories, which would give Moscow areas that it was unable to conquer on the battlefield, since, although it controls the first two regions completely, it only controls 70% of the third.
Other points of the proposal were that the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces be limited to 600,000 soldiers (today, they have around 900,000) and that the country include in its Constitution a clause on non-membership of NATO. In return, Ukraine would receive security guarantees against future invasions.
On Christmas Eve, after negotiations with the USA, Zelensky presented a 20-point counterproposal, in which Ukraine does not renounce one day joining NATO, nor does it recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and other occupied territories, by proposing two options: freezing the current front line in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson or demilitarizing the Donetsk zone that Ukraine still controls and that Moscow claims, which would be protected by international troops, upon approval in national referendum.
Russia has not yet given a definitive answer on this proposal, but said that it differs “radically” from the document that Moscow had been debating with the United States.
