One week. That's the deadline set by US President Donald Trump for his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to respond to the 28-point peace plan drafted between Washington and Moscow. Speaking to Fox Radio, the Republican president stated that next Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the United States, is an"appropriate time" for Kyiv to decide whether to accept the proposal, which would require it to cede territory and accept what have thus far been Ukrainian red lines in the negotiations.
This is the first time Trump has spoken publicly about the plan that US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll presented to Zelensky during a meeting in Kyiv on Thursday, which envisions, among other things, a reduction of the Ukrainian armed forces and the occupied country ceding control of the Donetsk province to Russia, which Moscow currently occupies in large, but not all, parts.
“If things go well, you can extend the deadlines, but we believe Thursday is an appropriate time,” the president stated.
Asked if the plan is difficult for Ukraine to accept, Trump replied that “they are losing territory right now.” He also noted that the war is “a bloodbath” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to end it. “He doesn’t want any more war. He’s already had his comeuppance. The fighting was supposed to be over in a day, but it’s gone on for four years.”
Throughout that period, “we have given Ukraine the best military equipment in the world, and we have given them a lot,” the US president stressed, impatient to end a war he had promised during his election campaign to end on his first day back in the White House, but which he has been forced to acknowledge is much more complicated to end than he had initially calculated.
Trump did specify that the sanctions imposed against Russia remain in place, especially those targeting its energy sector, the engine of the aggressor country's economy. The most recent sanctions—the only ones approved during his presidency—against the Russian oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft and their subsidiaries went into effect this Friday."The sanctions will continue and they are very strong, because the entire Russian economy is based on oil," he emphasized.
