Zelensky posted on the social platform X that his negotiating team was returning to Ukraine from talks with American officials in Miami.
“In my view, everything possible that we needed to do for the initial drafts had already been done. There are 20 points of the plan. Not everything is perfect so far, but this plan is in place,” Zelensky posted.
In a separate post, Zelensky laid out security guarantees that would be part of any agreement. Zelensky said officials were still discussing what the U.S. role in providing a military backstop would be, and acknowledged American security guarantees as a key point of disagreement.
“The key security guarantees that will be legally binding, voted on and supported by the U.S. Congress,” Zelensky wrote.
“This is precisely where the fundamental difference lies compared to the Budapest Memorandum, the Minsk agreements, or other arrangements. We are discussing the duration of these guarantees, their possible extension in the same format in which they are adopted.”
Other security guarantees included an army of 800,000 in Ukraine, which he said would require outside funding support, and membership in the European Union, which Zelensky said would provide economic and security assurances for Ukraine.
President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Sunday that he, along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum, “held productive and constructive meetings” with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev to advance plans to end the war in Ukraine, which began in 2022 when Russian forces invaded.
But Yuri Ushakov, President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aide, said Monday that most of the peace plan proposals the U.S. offered were put forward by Ukraine and Europe and would not suit Russia, making the path forward murky.
