Trump paints Zelenskyy into a corner with his new plan to end Russia’s war on Ukraine

WASHINGTON– With his new 28-point plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, President Donald Trump is resurfacing his argument that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not have “the cards” to continue on the battlefield and must reach a settlement that leans heavily in Moscow’s favor.

Trump, who has shown little regard for Zelensky since his first term, said Friday that he expects the Ukrainian leader to respond to his administration’s new plan to end the war by next Thursday.

“We think we have a way to get peace,” Trump told reporters during an appearance in the Oval Office. “He’s going to have to approve it.”

Rocked by a corruption scandal within his government, setbacks on the battlefield and another difficult winter ahead as Russia continues to bomb Ukraine’s energy grid, Zelensky says Ukraine now faces perhaps the toughest choice in its history.

Zelensky has not spoken with Trump since the plan was made public this week, but said he planned to speak to the Republican president in the coming days. This will likely be another in a series of difficult conversations the two leaders have had over the years.

The first time they spoke, in 2019, Trump tried to pressure Ukraine’s new leader to dig up dirt on Joe Biden before the 2020 election. That phone call sparked Trump’s first impeachment.

Trump made Biden’s support for Ukraine a central issue in his successful 2024 campaign, saying the conflict had cost American taxpayers too much money and promising he would quickly end the war.

Then, earlier this year, in a disastrous Oval Office meeting, Trump and Vice President JD Vance criticized Zelensky for what they called insufficient gratitude for the more than $180 billion the United States had allocated for military and other assistance to kyiv since the war began. This episode led to a temporary suspension of American aid to Ukraine.

And now, with this new proposal, Trump is pressuring Zelensky to accept land grants to Moscow, a massive reduction in the size of Ukraine’s military, and an agreement from Europe that Ukraine will never be admitted to the NATO military alliance.

“Ukraine could now face a very difficult choice: either a loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner,” Zelensky said Friday in a video speech.

At the center of Trump’s plan is the call for Ukraine to concede its entire eastern Donbas region, even though a vast portion of that land remains under Ukrainian control. Analysts at the Independent Institute for the Study of War estimate that it would take several years for the Russian army to completely seize the territory, based on its current pace of advances.

Trump nevertheless insists that the loss of the region – which includes cities that are vital centers of defense, industry and logistics for Ukrainian forces – is a fait accompli.

“They will lose in a short period of time. You know that,” Trump said Friday, when asked in a Fox News Radio interview about his pressure on Ukraine to give up the territory. “They’re losing land. They’re losing land.”

The Trump proposal was formally presented to Zelensky in kyiv on Thursday by Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the US army. The plan itself came as a surprise to Driscoll’s aides, who did not yet know Wednesday that their boss would travel to Ukraine as part of a team to present the plan to the Ukrainians.

Army officials came away from that meeting with the impression that the Ukrainians viewed the proposal as a starting point that would evolve as negotiations progressed, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive discussions.

It’s unclear how much patience Trump has to continue negotiations. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump’s new plan reflected “the realities of the situation” and offered the “best win-win scenario, in which both sides gain more than they have to give.”

Asked about Zelensky’s initial hesitant response to the proposal, Trump recalled the Oval Office blow-up in February with Zelenskyy: “You remember, right in the Oval Office, not too long ago, I said, ‘You don’t have the cards.’ »

Trump’s growing pressure comes as Zelensky faces bribes of more than $100 million for contracts with the national nuclear energy company. The scandal led to the resignations of senior Cabinet ministers and implicated other associates of Zelensky.

Konstantin Sonin, a political economist and Russia expert at the University of Chicago, said that “what Donald Trump is certainly extremely good at is spotting people’s weak points.”

One of the 28 elements of Trump’s proposal calls for elections to be held within 100 days of the deal’s enactment.

“I think it’s a rationalist assessment that there is more influence on Zelensky than on Putin,” Sonin said. He added: “Zelensky has his back against the wall” and “his government could collapse if it accepts” the American proposal.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is showing increasing signs of battlefield tension after years of war against a much larger and better equipped Russian army. Ukraine is desperately trying to fend off relentless Russian air attacks that have caused power outages across the country as winter approaches.

Kyiv is also grappling with doubts about the path forward. A European plan to finance next year’s Ukraine budget with loans linked to frozen Russian funds is now in question.

The Trump proposal, in its current form, also includes several elements that could deeply dent Ukrainian pride, said David Silbey, a military historian at Cornell University.

One provision calls on Russia and Ukraine to abolish “all discriminatory measures and guarantee the rights of Ukrainian and Russian media and education,” and “all Nazi ideologies and activities must be rejected and banned.” This element could be seen by the Ukrainian side as giving credence to the distorted historical narratives disseminated by Putin to legitimize the 2022 invasion.

Putin said the war was in part an attempt to “denazify” Ukraine and complained about the country’s “neo-Nazi regime” as justification for the Russian invasion. In fact, in Ukraine’s last parliamentary elections in 2019, support for far-right candidates was 2%, significantly lower than in many other European countries.

The plan’s provisions constitute “very clearly an attempt to strengthen Putin’s claim to Russian cultural identity in Ukraine,” Silbey said. He added: “From the loss of territory to the substantial reduction of the Ukrainian military to the cultural concessions that have been demanded, I just don’t think Zelensky can make this deal and look his audience in the eye again. »

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AP writers Michelle L. Price and Konstantin Toropin contributed reporting.