8.12.2025
US President Donald Trump has said his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not ready to sign a US-led peace proposal aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump was critical of Zelenskyy after US and Ukrainian negotiators completed three days of talks on Saturday aimed at bridging the differences in Washington’s proposal.
In an exchange with reporters on Sunday night, Trump suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward.
“I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t,” Trump said before taking part in the Kennedy Center Honours.
“Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy’s fine with it. His people love it it. But he isn’t ready.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly expressed approval for the White House plan. Putin said last week that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable, even though the original draft heavily favoured Moscow.
Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Zelenskyy since the beginning of his second White House term insisting that the war was a waste of US taxpayer money. Trump has also repeatedly urged Kyiv to cede land to Moscow to bring an end to a now nearly four-year war.
Zelenskyy said he had a “substantive phone call” with US officials engaged in the talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida. He said he had been given an update by US and Ukrainian officials at the negotiations over the phone.
“Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Zelenskyy wrote in a social media post on Saturday.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the updated strategic document, which spells out the administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision. Agency reports