Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday said Russia is complicating the efforts to end the war by refusing to accept the ceasefire.
The President wrote on X: “We see that Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation.”
“If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater – peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades. But together we are working for peace and security. Stopping the killing is a key element of stopping the war,” he said.
Zelenskyy is scheduled to visit Washington DC on Monday to meet President Donald Trump.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday urged Ukraine to strike a deal with Russia to end the war, declaring, “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not,” Reuters reported.
His comments came after a summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin, where the Russian leader was reported to have demanded further Ukrainian concessions.
According to the Reuters report, Trump later told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Putin had offered to freeze most of the current front lines if Kyiv agreed to cede all of Donetsk — a key industrial region Moscow has long sought to control. Zelenskiy rejected the demand outright, the source said.
Russia already holds around one-fifth of Ukraine, including nearly three-quarters of Donetsk province, which it first invaded in 2014.
Despite Ukraine and its European allies insisting on a ceasefire as a precursor to peace talks — a position the US had also backed until now — Trump said he and Putin agreed that a peace deal should be pursued directly, without an interim truce.
Friday’s Alaska summit marked the first US-Russia meeting since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The three-hour session ended without a ceasefire, but Trump insisted the talks had shifted the focus toward a broader settlement.
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
