Ukraine and European leaders will prepare a peace plan within the next week to reach a ceasefire in the war with Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday.
"Some quick points. Like a plan for a ceasefire. We decided we will work on it in the next week or ten days," Zelenskiy told Axios on Monday. The Ukrainian leader expressed scepticism that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was ready to accept any peace plan. Furthermore, Zelenskiy described as “constructive” his meeting with Donald Trump in the White House on October 17. “My talks with President Trump were about pressure on Russia. I think he wanted to pressure them, but he didn't want to make an escalation or close the window ... for diplomacy," Zelenskiy said. The Ukrainian leader added that Trump and him agreed on freezing the current situation in the frontline and that the two men "understood each other."
Zelenskiy also rejected recent claims that the Russian army was advancing on the frontline, adding that he made it clear to Trump that "nobody is winning now on the battlefield." Zelenskiy claimed, citing his intelligence agencies, that Putin had sought to occupy the entire eastern Donbas industrial region by October 15, a deadline that has already passed. "Russia can't do it. He doesn't have enough people. His strong battalions have been destroyed. Today on the battlefield, we stay mostly where we stood during this last 2-3 months," Zelenskiy said.
Despite positive evaluation of his recent trip to Washington, Zelenskiy had been unable to secure the agreement on the supply of US-made Tomahawk long-range missiles to Ukraine during the meeting with Trump. In the bilateral lunch in the Oval Office, Trump told Zelenskiy “I would rather Ukraine does not need” Tomahawks, explaining that the US might need those assault weapons itself in the future. According to some media reports, the one-on-one meeting between the two leaders that were held without the presense of media went bad for Zelenskiy whom Trump allegedly berated. Regardless of this, ollowing the meeting, Zelenskiy expressed optimism, stressing that Trump had not said no to the supply of Tomahawks to Ukraine.
Trump-Zelenskiy meeting came on the heel of the phone call between Trump and Putin that ended with the agreement to hold another summit in Budapest, Hungary. Days later Trump revealed that the summit would not take place as he did not want a “wasted meeting”.
