US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy clashed again yesterday on efforts to end the three-year-old war in Ukraine, with the US leader chiding Zelenskiy for refusing to recognise Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
Trump’s Vice President JD Vance said it was time for Russia and Ukraine to either agree to a US peace proposal ‘or for the United States to walk away from the process’, echoing a warning Trump gave last week.
Speaking to reporters in India, Vance said the proposal called for freezing territorial lines ‘at some level close to where they are today’ and a ‘long-term diplomatic settlement that hopefully will lead to long-term peace’.
“The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing,” he said.
A former Western official familiar with the US proposal said it also called for the recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Zelenskiy on Tuesday reiterated that Ukraine will not recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea, saying: “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”
Trump, who argued with Zelenskiy in a televised Oval Office meeting in March, called this an inflammatory statement that made a peace deal harder to achieve.
The US president said Crimea was lost years ago ‘and is not even a point of discussion’.
“Nobody is asking Zelenskiy to recognise Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it 11 years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Russian fighters seized control of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 in a move that was condemned internationally. Nevertheless Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said after Wednesday’s talks, Kyiv was committed to working with the US to achieve peace.
Earlier, US, Ukrainian and European officials met in London for peace talks aimed at ending the three-year war. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled his trip there, raising questions over how much progress was being made.
Rubio’s no-show prompted cancellation of a broader meeting with foreign ministers from Ukraine, Britain, France and Germany, underscoring the gaps between Washington, Kyiv and its European allies over how to bring an end to the war.
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