U.S. President Says Ukraine Deal is Not ‘Final Offer’ as Officials Gather for Geneva Summit

AP

President Zelenskyy and his wife, Olena, at a monument to victims of the Holodomor famine in the 1930s, in Kyiv on Saturday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that his Moscow-drafted “peace plan” was “not my final offer”, after a furious backlash from Ukrainians who described it as reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler.

The U.S. president told reporters during brief remarks at the White House: “We’d like to get to peace. It should’ve happened a long time ago … we’re trying to get it ended, one way or the other we have to get it ended.”

Ukrainian and American officials will meet in Switzerland on Sunday for talks to discuss the plan. Security officials from France, Britain and Germany are expected to join them in Geneva.

In the build-up to the talks, the U.S. state department disputed claims by U.S. senators from across the political spectrum that secretary of state Marco Rubio had told them the proposal “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians”. The claim, made by figures including the independent senator Angus King, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, was “blatantly false”, said U.S. state department deputy spokesman Tommy Piggott. Rubio later said in a post that the proposal was authored by the US “as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations” and was based on input from both sides.

President Trump has given Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy until Thursday to sign the 28-point document. It calls on Kyiv to give up territory it currently controls to Russia, reduce the size of its army and relinquish long-range weapons. It also rules out a European peacekeeping force and sanctions for Russian war crimes.

In a sombre address on Friday, President Zelenskyy warned his country faces an impossible choice over the coming days between keeping its national dignity and losing a major partner in the shape of the US. It faces one of the most difficult moments in its history, he admitted.

Speaking on Saturday, President Zelenskyy said real or “dignified” peace was always based on “guaranteed security and justice”. He announced a negotiating team, appointed by presidential decree, that would soon meet its US counterparts in Geneva, led by his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.

Zelenskyy has sought to engage constructively with a White House seemingly determined to end the conflict on the Kremlin’s one-sided terms. He has made clear he cannot give up Ukraine’s sovereignty or abandon a constitution that enshrines the country’s current borders.

At a meeting in South Africa, G20 leaders and the European Council issued a joint statement pushing back on Trump’s plan, saying it needs “additional work”. It said EU and Nato members would need to be consulted on some of its provisions, which rule out Kyiv’s Nato membership and put conditions on its future EU accession.

Source: The Guardian



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