Zelenskyy asks Trump for 50 years of security guarantees, says meeting with Russia possible

Ukraine’s president, Volodymr Zelenskyy, said Monday that he has asked for up to 50 years’ worth of security guarantees for Ukraine during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the weekend.

Commenting on the talks with Trump in Florida on Sunday, Zelenskyy told journalists that he said a meeting with Russia would only be possible after the president and European leaders had agreed on a framework peace deal for Ukraine.

The comments, reported by Reuters on Monday, included Zelenskyy stating that he had asked for security guarantees for up to 50 years for Ukraine, but that the current 20-point peace plan envisaged guarantees — aimed at deterring future Russian aggression — for 15 years.

Zelenskyy said he plans to meet with European leaders in the coming days to discuss the proposals.

Any peace plan should be put to the Ukrainian people in a referendum, he added, noting that any vote to approve or reject the agreement should be held during a 60-day ceasefire. Zelenskyy said “Russia clearly does not want a ceasefire for now” after several days of heavy drone and missile attacks on Ukraine.

Ukraine’s comments come after talks with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Sunday. Trump said the discussions had gone well but acknowledged that “one or two very thorny issues” remained.

“I do think we’re getting a lot closer, maybe very close,” Trump told reporters after emerging from the talks.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy described the talks as a “really great discussion” in which security guarantees were “100% agreed” upon, but Trump gave a slightly lower estimate when asked about that part of the proposal.

When asked by a reporter what issues remain unresolved, Trump said it was about “the land.”

“Some of that land has been taken,” Trump said. “Some of that land is maybe up for grabs, but it may be taken over the next period of a number of months, and you are better off making a deal now.”

Moscow has demanded that Ukraine cede the eastern Donbas region to Russia and has rejected security guarantees for Kyiv so far. For its part, Ukraine has repeatedly rejected calls for the Donbas, which is mostly but not fully occupied by Russian forces, to be handed to Moscow.

It’s unclear whether Zelenskyy would meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin if a peace agreement was agreed in principle, with both leaders vehemently refusing to meet in the past.

Trump said he had spoken with Putin about peace proposals during a phone conversation on Sunday but signalled that Russia had not appeared to support a ceasefire to allow for a referendum in Ukraine. He divulged few other details about the call, which he said lasted two hours.

When asked to comment on the U.S.-Ukraine talks which followed that call, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday: “We don’t know how they went. We can’t judge. After these talks, the two presidents — I mean the President of Russia and the President of the United States — agreed to have a phone call again. Then we’ll get the information.”