Trump stated from the White House, as reported by TASS: “It’s not easy, but I think we are very close to reaching an agreement. We’ll see.”
This statement comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy affirmed on Tuesday his country’s readiness to proceed with a U.S.-backed peace agreement, declaring his willingness to discuss “sensitive points” with the U.S. President, with the talks to include European allies.
In a speech before the so-called “Coalition of the Willing,” Zelenskyy appealed to European leaders to establish a mechanism for deploying a “reassurance force” in Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv as long as Moscow shows no intention of ending the conflict.
This coincided with White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt announcing that the United States had made “tremendous progress” over the past week towards achieving a peace agreement by bringing the warring parties to the negotiating table, noting via the “X” platform that there are “some non-intractable fine details” that require further dialogue between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.
For his part, a U.S. official revealed to “ABC” that Kyiv has agreed to a revised version of the peace plan, explaining that “some small details still need to be worked out.”
In contrast, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that his country has not yet received the revised version, hinting at the possibility of rejecting it if it does not take into account what was agreed upon at the Alaska summit between the American and Russian sides. He said, “If what was agreed upon during the Alaska summit is erased, the situation will be completely different.”
A knowledgeable source revealed that the updated version does not include setting a ceiling on the number of the Ukrainian army – after the first version stipulated reducing it to 600,000 – and that the clause “amnesty for crimes committed during the war” will not be included.
The previous American plan stipulated that Ukraine relinquish the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas region, make the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions free of weapons, in addition to Kyiv abandoning its efforts to join NATO, reducing the size of the armed forces, and preventing the deployment of any international forces on its territory. It also called for general elections within 100 days of the cessation of fighting.
Zelenskyy is expected to visit the United States in the coming days to finalize the plan, according to Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov.
