President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to Ukraine on Monday after a whirlwind diplomatic mission that included both humiliation by President Trump and a warm embrace from European leaders. He vowed to use all diplomatic paths to pursue an end to the Ukrainian war with Russia, but admitted that there was a “long road.”
Russia has given no indication that it will accept conditions other than Ukraine's surrender and the permanent conquest of Ukraine's massive belt. Trump has made it clear by the day that his intention is to stand with Moscow.
The Ukrainians insisted that they would not abandon their arms unless they received a US-backed security guarantee to prevent the Kremlin from reorganizing and attacking again.
After a tragic meeting with Trump on Friday, Zelensky, who accused the US president and vice president JD Vance of ungratefulness, on Sunday, he pledged to work with Ukraine to create a peace plan that can be presented to the United States.
Zelensky himself seemed to be on the verge of America's buy-in for a peace plan, and was further moving towards efforts to smooth things out at the White House. “We are grateful for all the support we have received from the United States,” he said in a speech to the nation on Sunday night. “There was no day when we weren't grateful.”
“There will be diplomacy for peace,” Zelensky said. “And for us all to stand together, Ukraine, all of Europe, and inevitably America.”
But Ukrainian leaders still face monumental challenges in repairing Trump's relationship with his advisor, as the US president revealed in a tough social media post Monday afternoon.
Trump took Zelensky's proposal that the path to peace would be long and difficult, and added, “America will not hold back much longer!”
Again, Trump appears to be putting a burden on ending the war with Ukraine while saying he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin wants peace despite continuing his invasion in Moscow.
A day ago, in a series of coordinated interviews on American television on Sunday, the top administration of the Trump administration attacked Ukrainian leaders, often in very personal terms.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz compared him to “a former girlfriend who wants to discuss everything she said nine years ago, rather than pushing the relationship forward.”
Tarshi Gabbard, the new director of national intelligence, questioned whether Ukraine and the United States share common values, and expanded her criticism to the European countries gathered around Zelensky, saying “we are not standing with these fundamental freedom values.”
When asked by the host of “Fox News Sunday” when Russia expressed the same values as the Americans, she said, “That's not what we're talking about here.”
The oval office meeting was fed to propaganda from the Kremlin and added to Pileon on Monday.
The conference indicated that “the Kiev regime and Zelensky do not want peace, they want the war to continue.” His comments misdescribed Ukraine as an invader, hinting at the harsh bond between Moscow and Washington, in order not to try to create peace. The Washington and Moscow attempts “evidently not enough” to end the battle, Peskov said. “There's no important element.”
He implied that given Russia's military interests, Russia could push for a more severe bargain than it had done during the peace negotiations that failed at the start of the war. “Since then, two and a half years have changed,” Peskov said. “Only the blind can't see it, or the deaf people don't want to hear it.”
Zelensky tried to defend himself from what he was portrayed as an obstacle to peace. Many Ukrainians find it difficult to understand given their country's severe attacks for three years.
Ukrainians almost universally want peace, not just peace. “We need peace, not endless war,” Zelensky said again when he returned to Ukraine.
But the bitter experience makes Ukrainians worried that a ceasefire without security guarantees will only provide a short rest for the Russian army to regroup and attack again. They point to the fact that Ukraine has been fighting Russia in the eastern Donbas region since 2014 and that Putin has violated several peace deals aimed at ending violence there. Russian leaders also argued that they had no intention of increasing wider invasions of Ukraine until the tanks rolled across the border three years ago.
Zelensky's claim to promote security assurance was clearly one of the things that angered Trump.
Zelensky once again said there are some basic principles that are currently not open to negotiations to work with European leaders to come up with peace plans.
“We need to move on from understanding international law,” he said in a meeting with a London reporter. “We don't want anything that's not ours, but when you occupy something, or when you break the law, everything will come back to you,” he said.
He emphasized that Ukraine would never recognize the occupied territory as Russians. “For us, this will be a temporary occupation.”
Russia needs to take concrete action before dealing, he said.
“The ceasefire must begin with the exchanges of prisoners and the return of children,” his office wrote in a statement. “This will be a step towards showing Russia's true intentions for peace.”
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin and accused him of war crimes based on the acquittal and deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children in Russia during the war.
The French are also proposing a step-by-step process, perhaps in a ceasefire over energy infrastructure strikes by both sides.
For now, the fight is still as fiercely furious as ever.
There have been no Russian attacks since Trump spoke with Putin two weeks ago. Dozens of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the past two weeks as Russia continues to launch nighttime drones and missile attacks.
At the same time, Ukraine has continued its campaign targeting Russian oil and gas refineries, hoping to deepen economic pressure on Moscow.
In one attack, the drone reportedly targeted the Ufimsky refinery factory, more than 800 miles from the nearest Ukraine territory. The impact of the attack could not be assessed immediately.
In hopes that America's turn against Kiev could be for him that his army failed for him, Putin stuck to his maximalist goals in recent public comments.
These include his desire to control a wide land that his army has not yet occupied, and can take years at the current pace of creeping progress in the Russian army.
Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed a report from Berlin.
