United States President Donald Trump has increased pressure on Ukraine to accept an agreement to end Russia’s war, claiming that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could choose to end the conflict “almost immediately”.
Addressing Zelenskyy a day before his high-stakes visit to the White House on Monday, Trump warned that the return of Russian-occupied Crimea and Ukrainian membership of NATO would be off the table in any negotiated settlement.
“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
“Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”
Trump’s comments came as European leaders were set to accompany Zelenskyy on his visit to Washington, DC, on Monday amid concerns in Brussels and Kyiv that the US president could sign off on a deal that is overly favourable to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking shortly after Trump’s comments on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that previous concessions to Moscow, including in Crimea, had only emboldened Putin to wage more war.
“We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably. And peace must be lasting,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
“Not like it was years ago, when Ukraine was forced to give up Crimea and part of our East – part of Donbas – and Putin simply used it as a springboard for a new attack. Or when Ukraine was given so called ‘security guarantees’ in 1994, but they didn’t work.”
Zelenskyy added that Crimea “should not have been given up then, just as Ukrainians did not give up Kyiv, Odesa, or Kharkiv after 2022”.
“Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their independence,” he said.
While Trump has indicated that a deal with Moscow would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Russia and Ukraine, Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out handing over Ukrainian territory to “the occupier”.
In a bid to press Trump to maintain support for Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are attending Monday’s talks at the White House.
Macron said on Sunday that European leaders and Zelenskyy would aim to present a united front in the face of Russian aggression.
“If we show weakness today in front of Russia, we are laying the ground for future conflicts,” Macron said.
Despite Trump dismissing the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said earlier on Sunday that Putin had agreed to support a US-backed security guarantee resembling the 32-member transatlantic alliance’s collective defence mandate during last week’s meeting with the US president in Alaska.
“We were able to win the following concession: That the United States could offer Article 5-like protection, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO,” Witkoff told CNN’s State of the Union.
Under Article 5, an armed attack against a NATO member nation is considered an attack against all members of the alliance.
Still, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday sought to temper expectations, saying an agreement to end the war was “a long ways off”.
“We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement,” Rubio told ABC News’s This Week.
“We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement, but there remain some big areas of disagreement.”