President Volodymyr Zelensky returned to Ukraine on Monday after a swirling diplomatic mission which included both humiliation, by President Trump, and a warm embrace, European leaders. He swore to use all diplomatic ways to continue the Ukraine war with Russia, but recognized that there was “a long way to go”.
Russia has given no indication that it will accept other terms than Ukrainian capitulation and the permanent conquest of a large band of Ukraine – and Mr. Trump is clearer during his intention to stand with Moscow.
The Ukrainians insisted that they will not deposit their weapons unless they receive security guarantees, supported by the United States, which would prevent the Kremlin from gathering and attacking again.
After a disastrous meeting with Trump on Friday, in which the American president and vice-president JD Vance reprimanded him as ungrateful, Mr. Zelensky received a demonstration of support for European democracies on Sunday, which undertook to work with Ukraine to develop a peace plan which he could then present in the United States.
Zelensky said that American membership for a peace plan was important and seemed to go further in his efforts to smooth things with the White House. “We are grateful to all the support we have received from the United States,” he said in his speech to the nation on Sunday evening. “There was not a single day when we did not feel grateful.”
“There will be a diplomacy for peace,” said Zelensky. “And for the good of all of us standing together – Ukraine, all of Europe and necessarily America.”
It doesn’t seem to have been enough. On Monday evening, the United States temporarily suspended all military aid in Ukraine, according to a senior administration official. The order must take effect immediately, affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and ammunition in pipelines and on order.
The official said that the aid would not resume as long as Mr. Trump determined that Ukraine had demonstrated a commitment to peace negotiations with Russia.
Again, Trump seemed to place the burden of putting an end to the war against Ukraine while saying that he believed that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wanted peace, despite the continuous aggression of Moscow.
One day earlier, in a series of interviews coordinated on American television on Sunday, the best officials of the Trump administration assailed the Ukrainian leader, often in remarkably personal terms.
The national security advisor Mike Waltz compared him to “an ex-girlfriend who wants to argue everything you said nine years ago, rather than advancing the relationship”.
The new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, wondered if Ukraine and the United States really share common values and have extended its criticism to European countries which have gathered around Mr. Zelensky, affirming that “does not remain with us around these fundamental values of freedom”.
When asked the host of “Fox News Sunday” if Russia represented the same values as the Americans, she said: “It is not really what we are talking about here.”
The oval office meeting gave propaganda from the Kremlin, which added to the battery on Monday.
The meeting has shown that “the kyiv and Zelensky regime do not want peace, they want to continue the war,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov on Monday. His comments experienced a tightening link between Moscow and Washington as they falsely portray Ukraine as the aggressor, not wanting to make peace. The attempts by Washington and Moscow “will not clearly be sufficient” to end the fighting, said Peskov. “An important element is missing.”
He suggested that Russia could now put pressure for a good deal that during the peace talks failed at the start of the war, given the military gains in Russia. “Since then, 2 and a half years later, the situation has changed,” said Peskov. “Only the blind cannot see this or the deaf don’t want to hear this.”
Mr. Zelensky sought to defend himself from being painted as the obstacle to peace – a criticism that many Ukrainians have trouble understanding since their country has been fierce for three years.
Ukrainians almost universally want peace, but not peace at all costs. “We need peace, not an endless war,” said Zelensky again when he returned to Ukraine.
But a bitter experience means that the Ukrainians fear that a ceasefire without security guarantee will provide a brief respite from Russian forces to come together and attack again. They underline the fact that Ukraine has been fighting Russia in the Eastern region of Donbas since 2014 and that Mr. Putin has violated several peace agreements aimed at putting an end to violence. The Russian chief also said that he had no intention of setting up a broader invasion of Ukraine until his tanks crossed the border three years ago.
Mr. Zelensky’s insistence for safety guarantees was one of the things that apparently angry Trump.
As Mr. Zelensky is now working with European leaders to develop a peace plan, he once again said that there were fundamental principles that are not open to negotiations.
“We have to understand international law,” he said at a meeting with journalists in London. “We don’t want anything that does not belong to us, but when you occupy something or when you break the law, everything will come back to you,” he said.
He stressed that Ukraine will never recognize occupied territories as Russian: “For us, these will be temporary professions.”
Russia, he said, should take concrete measures before any agreement.
“The ceasefire must start with the exchange of prisoners and the return of children,” his office wrote in a statement. “It would be a step to demonstrate the true intention of the peace of Russia.”
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Mr. Putin and accused him of war crimes, based on the kidnapping of Russia and the expulsion of thousands of Ukrainian children during the war.
The French also suggested a staged process, perhaps with a truce concerning strikes on energy infrastructure by both sides.
For the moment, the fights are raging as violently as ever.
Since Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Putin two weeks ago, there were no Russian attacks. Dozens of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the past two weeks, according to Ukrainian officials, while Russia continues to launch drone and nocturnal missile attacks.
At the same time, Ukraine has maintained its campaign to target Russian oil and gas refineries, hoping to deepen the economic pressure on Moscow.
In an attack, the drones would have targeted the Ufimsky refinery plant, more than 800 miles from the territory held by the nearest Ukrainian. It was not possible to immediately assess the impact of the attack.
Hopefully the Tour of America against kyiv could do for him what his soldiers did not do, Mr. Putin was held to his maximalist objectives in the comments of the public in recent days.
These include the desire to take control of large expanses of land, its forces do not yet occupy and which, at the current rate of creeping advances in the Russian army, it would take many years to capture.
Anatoly Kurmanaev Berlin’s contributed reports.
