Zelenskyy holds talks in London with European allies on US peace plan and security

Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy met French, Ger­man and British lead­ers in Lon­don on Mon­day amid what Kyiv’s Eu­ro­pean al­lies de­scribed as a “de­ci­sive time” in the U.S.-led ef­fort to end Rus­sia’s war in Ukraine.

Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer held talks with Ze­len­skyy, French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron and Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Friedrich Merz at the British leader’s 10 Down­ing St. res­i­dence to try to strength­en Ukraine’s hand amid mount­ing im­pa­tience from U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

In an ex­change with re­porters on Sun­day night, Trump ap­peared frus­trat­ed with Ze­len­skyy, claim­ing the Ukrain­ian leader “hasn’t yet read the pro­pos­al.”

“Rus­sia is, I be­lieve, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Ze­len­skyy’s fine with it,” Trump said in Wash­ing­ton. “His peo­ple love it, but he hasn’t read it.”

It’s not clear why Trump thought Ze­len­skyy hadn’t read the plan or who he was say­ing loved it. Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials have made spar­ing com­ments about it and few de­tails of the ne­go­ti­a­tions have been made pub­lic.

Starmer, Macron and Merz took a more sup­port­ive stance to­ward Kyiv in com­ments be­fore their Mon­day meet­ing, which last­ed about two hours. The U.K. leader said the push for peace was at a “crit­i­cal stage,” and stressed the need for “a just and last­ing cease­fire.”

Merz, mean­while, said he was “skep­ti­cal” about some de­tails in doc­u­ments re­leased by the U.S. “We have to talk about it. That’s why we are here,” he said. “The com­ing days … could be a de­ci­sive time for all of us.”

Eu­ro­pean lead­ers are work­ing to en­sure that any cease­fire is backed by sol­id se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees both from Eu­rope and the U.S. to de­ter Rus­sia from at­tack­ing again. Trump has not giv­en ex­plic­it guar­an­tees in pub­lic.

Ze­len­skyy said late Sun­day that his talks with Eu­ro­pean lead­ers this week in Lon­don and Brus­sels will fo­cus on se­cu­ri­ty, air de­fense and long-term fund­ing for Ukraine’s war ef­fort. He said Mon­day that Ukraine needs sup­port from both Eu­rope and the U.S.

“There are some things we can’t man­age with­out the Amer­i­cans, things which we can’t man­age with­out Eu­rope, and that’s why we need to make some im­por­tant de­ci­sions,” he said at Down­ing Street.

Af­ter the Lon­don meet­ing, Macron’s of­fice said the ses­sion al­lowed the lead­ers “to con­tin­ue joint work on the U.S. plan in or­der to com­ple­ment it with Eu­ro­pean con­tri­bu­tions, in close co­or­di­na­tion with Ukraine.”

Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­ers are fi­nal­iz­ing that work ahead of “dis­cus­sions be­tween Eu­ro­peans, Amer­i­cans, and Ukraini­ans, which should strength­en con­ver­gence in the com­ing days,” the state­ment said. “At the same time, in-depth work will be done to pro­vide Ukraine with ro­bust se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees and to plan mea­sures for Ukraine’s re­con­struc­tion.”

Ob­sta­cles in the peace plan

U.S. and Ukrain­ian ne­go­tia­tors com­plet­ed three days of talks on Sat­ur­day aimed at try­ing to nar­row dif­fer­ences on the U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion’s peace pro­pos­al.

Ze­len­skyy said on Telegram that talks had been “sub­stan­tive” and that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and De­fense Coun­cil Sec­re­tary Rustem Umerov and Chief of the Gen­er­al Staff An­drii Hna­tov were trav­el­ing back to Eu­rope to brief him.

A ma­jor stick­ing point in the plan is the sug­ges­tion that Kyiv must cede con­trol of the Don­bas re­gion of east­ern Ukraine to Rus­sia, which il­le­gal­ly oc­cu­pies most but not all of the ter­ri­to­ry. Ukraine and its Eu­ro­pean al­lies have balked at the idea of hand­ing over land.

Starmer said he “won’t be putting pres­sure” on Ze­len­skyy to ac­cept a peace set­tle­ment.

Trump has had a hot-and-cold re­la­tion­ship with Ze­len­skyy since win­ning a sec­ond term, in­sist­ing the war was a waste of U.S. tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. Trump has al­so re­peat­ed­ly urged the Ukraini­ans to cede land to Rus­sia to end the near­ly four-year con­flict.

US re­leas­es na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy

The Eu­ro­pean talks fol­low the pub­li­ca­tion of a new U.S. na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty strat­e­gy that alarmed Eu­ro­pean lead­ers and was wel­comed by Rus­sia.

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov said the doc­u­ment, which spells out the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s core for­eign pol­i­cy in­ter­ests, was large­ly in line with Moscow’s vi­sion.

“The nu­ances that we see in the new con­cept cer­tain­ly look ap­peal­ing to us,” he said Mon­day. “It men­tions the need for di­a­logue and build­ing con­struc­tive, friend­ly re­la­tions. This can­not but ap­peal to us, and it ab­solute­ly cor­re­sponds to our vi­sion. We un­der­stand that by elim­i­nat­ing the ir­ri­tants that cur­rent­ly ex­ist in bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions, a prospect may open for us to tru­ly re­store our re­la­tions and bring them out of the rather deep cri­sis.”

The doc­u­ment re­leased Fri­day by the White House said the U.S. wants to im­prove its re­la­tion­ship with Rus­sia af­ter years of Moscow be­ing treat­ed as a glob­al pari­ah and that end­ing the war is a core U.S. in­ter­est to “reestab­lish strate­gic sta­bil­i­ty with Rus­sia.”

The doc­u­ment al­so says NA­TO must not be “a per­pet­u­al­ly ex­pand­ing al­liance,” echo­ing an­oth­er com­plaint by Rus­sia. It was scathing about the mi­gra­tion and free speech poli­cies of long­stand­ing U.S. al­lies in Eu­rope, sug­gest­ing they face the “prospect of civ­i­liza­tion­al era­sure” due to mi­gra­tion.

Starmer’s gov­ern­ment has de­clined to com­ment on the doc­u­ment, say­ing it is a mat­ter for the U.S. gov­ern­ment.

Aer­i­al at­tacks con­tin­ue

Rus­sia con­tin­ued to at­tack Ukraine amid the diplo­mat­ic ef­forts. Its drones struck high-rise apart­ments in the north­east­ern Ukrain­ian city of Okhtyr­ka overnight, in­jur­ing sev­en peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to the head of the re­gion­al ad­min­is­tra­tion, Oleh Hry­horov. He said the build­ing was ex­ten­sive­ly dam­aged.

In the north­ern city of Cherni­hiv, a Russ­ian drone ex­plod­ed out­side a res­i­den­tial build­ing, in­jur­ing three peo­ple, re­gion­al head Vi­ach­eslav Chaus said. The at­tack al­so dam­aged a kinder­garten, gas lines and cars.

Ukraine’s air force said Rus­sia fired 149 drones overnight, with 131 neu­tral­ized and 16 oth­ers strik­ing their tar­gets.

Mean­while, Russ­ian air de­fens­es de­stroyed 67 Ukrain­ian drones overnight, Rus­sia’s De­fense Min­istry said. The drones were shot down over 11 Russ­ian re­gions, it said.

LON­DON (AP)