Trump says Ukraine deal is not ‘final offer’ as officials gather for Geneva summit | Ukraine
Donald Trump said on Saturday that the “peace plan” prepared by Moscow was “not my final proposal”; Ukrainians reacted furiously, recalling Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler in 1938.
“We want to achieve peace. This should have happened a long time ago… we are trying to end this, we have to end it one way or another,” the US president told reporters during brief remarks at the White House.
Ukrainian and American officials will meet in Switzerland on Sunday to discuss the plan. Security officials from France, England and Germany are expected to join them in Geneva.
During preparations for the negotiations, US senators told the US media that Secretary of State Marco Rubio contacted them on his way to Geneva to clarify the nature of the leaked plan. Independent Maine senator Angus King, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the proposal was “not a management plan” but a “Russian wish list.”
However, Trump gave Volodymyr Zelenskiy until Thursday to sign the 28-article document. It calls for Kiev to cede territory it currently controls to Russia, reduce the size of its army and give up long-range weapons. It also eliminates the establishment of European peacekeepers and sanctions for Russia’s war crimes.
In a somber speech on Friday, Zelenskyy warned that his country faces an impossible choice in the coming days between preserving its national dignity and losing an important partner in the form of the United States. He admitted that he was facing one of the most difficult moments in his history.
Speaking on Saturday, Zelenskyy said real or “dignified” peace is always based on “guaranteed security and justice”. He announced that a negotiating team appointed by presidential decree and led by chief of staff Andriy Yermak would soon meet with their US counterparts in Geneva.
Another member of the Ukrainian delegation, former defense minister and national security council secretary Rustam Umerov, said there would be consultations with Washington “on possible parameters of a future peace agreement.”
Umerov signaled red lines, adding: “Ukraine approaches this process with a clear understanding of its own interests. This is another stage of the dialogue that has been ongoing in recent days and is primarily aimed at harmonizing our vision for the next steps.”
Zelenskyy has sought to engage constructively with the White House, which appears determined to end the conflict on the Kremlin’s unilateral terms. He made clear that he could not give up Ukraine’s sovereignty or abandon a constitution that preserved the country’s current borders.
At a meeting in South Africa, G20 leaders and the European Council issued a joint statement backtracking on Trump’s plan, saying it needed “additional study.” He said EU and NATO members would need to be consulted on some of Kyiv’s provisions that exclude NATO membership and impose conditions on future EU membership.
Ukraine’s reaction to the text, drafted by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev and Trump’s representative Steve Witkoff, was largely hostile. Commentators said this was a plan for another Russian invasion: not just of Ukraine but also of other parts of Europe.
Mustafa Nayyem, the journalist and politician who led Ukraine’s pro-democracy Maidan revolution in 2014, said it invited parallels with Chamberlain’s infamous Munich agreement with Hitler. The Trumps’ peace plan came from the same “recognizable strain”; the victim was invited to “formulate his own defeat so that everyone could live more easily.”
In a Facebook post, Nayyem said he was angry about Russia’s “full” amnesty for war crimes. He said this was an insult to people hiding in basements in Bucha or Mariupol, where Russian troops executed hundreds of civilians, and to people whose children were forcibly deported to Russia. “It’s a pretty cynical deal,” he concluded.
Speaking at Kiev’s Golden Gate metro station, 21-year-old Dmytro Sariskyi said Russia had been trying to control Ukraine politically and territorially “for years”. Trump agreed to “almost nothing” in his deal and continued to keep his forces on Ukrainian territory. “I think the agreement is an attempt to disintegrate Ukraine and impose unfair conditions on us,” he said.
He said that if Zelenskyy signed the proposals, Kiev would have to give up its freedoms. If it had not done so, the United States would likely have cut off cooperation and intelligence sharing, a key source of battlefield information for Ukrainian troops on the front lines. “There’s no good way out of this right now,” he said.
Another passenger, 19-year-old Sofia Barchan, said Ukraine would “remain strong” without American support. “We will fight as long as it takes. Our lands, including Crimea and the east, will remain our lands. It belongs to Ukraine.” He said Zelenskyy was a “smart person” and predicted that he would not give up Ukrainian territory.
Speaking in the rain next to a replica of Kiev’s original medieval gate, Olena Ivanovna said she was grateful to Trump for his efforts to broker peace. He said Ukraine should be ready to temporarily give up Crimea and the eastern Donbas region if it meant keeping America as a partner. “President Zelenskyy should hold a referendum and ask the people,” he said.
Previous European leaders had publicly condemned the plan. Sanna Marin, the former prime minister of Finland, called the incident a disaster not only for Ukraine and Ukrainians, but for “the entire democratic world.” If the West shows weakness and ignorance, as Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, he said, “more aggression and conflict” would follow.
Guy Verhofstadt, the former prime minister of Belgium, described Churchill’s appeasement as “one who feeds the crocodile, hoping that it will eat him last.” He added: “Trump now sides with Putin. Europe must choose again: appeasement or our values, imperialism or freedom. Another moment of truth for us.” [European] unity.”
