KYIV: The US is making its offer of security guarantees for a peace deal in Ukraine conditional on Kyiv ceding all of the country’s eastern region of Donbas to Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Reuters in an interview.
With the US focused on its own conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump is applying pressure to Ukraine in an effort to bring a quick end to the four-year war triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, Zelensky said.
“The Middle East definitely has an impact on President Trump, and I think on his next steps. President Trump, unfortunately, in my opinion, still chooses a strategy of putting more pressure on the Ukrainian side,” he told Reuters.
The US, Russia and Ukraine have held three rounds of high-level, trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year in a bid to negotiate an end to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War Two, which has laid waste to swaths of Ukraine and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly said robust security guarantees from international partners are needed to ensure that Russia does not restart hostilities in the future, after any peace deal is agreed.
