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Zelenskyy says plan includes US security guarantees for 15 years, although he asked for more
We are restarting our live coverage of the war in Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts to bring it to an end after nearly four years of conflict following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters via WhatsApp this morning that he asked Donald Trump to provide security guarantees of up to 50 years during their high stakes meeting at the US president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, yesterday.
Zelenskyy said that, instead, a draft peace framework envisages US security guarantees for Ukraine for 15 years.
It is not clear what form these commitments would take, but the Ukrainian leader has been pushing for “article-5-like” security guarantees from Europe and the US, referring to Nato’s founding principle that an attack on one member should be seen as an attack on all.
Zelenskyy has said US security guarantees for Ukraine under the revised 20-point proposal to end the war have been 100% agreed, though Trump was more cautious, putting the figure at more like 95%.
Both leaders said progress had been made during the Florida talks and stressed that the lengthy peace talks would continue. Trump, however, cautioned there were “one or two tough” outstanding issues, including over territory, and expressed sympathy with Russia not wanting a ceasefire. “You have to understand the other side,” he said.
Trump said that a proposal to turn eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Russia largely controls, into a demilitarised zone remains “unresolved”, adding that it will become clear within weeks if the war can end.
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French President Emmanuel Macron, a leading part of the ‘coalition of the willing’ alongside British prime minister Keir Starmer, has said Kyiv’s allies would meet in Paris in January to discuss security guarantees.
Zelenskyy says foreign troops in Ukraine are necessary part of security guarantees
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday he considered the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine to be a necessary part of security guarantees for Kyiv as part of any deal to end the war.
“I believe that the presence of international troops is a real security guarantee, it is a strengthening of the security guarantees that our partners are already offering us,” Zelenskyy told reporters.
European leaders said earlier this month that Europe is ready to lead a “multinational force” in Ukraine as part of a US proposal for a peace agreement.
The leaders of the UK, France, Germany and eight other European countries said troops from a “coalition of the willing” with US support could “assist in the regeneration of Ukraine’s forces, in securing Ukraine’s skies, and in supporting safer seas, including through operating inside Ukraine”.
In an interview with the Russian state news agency Tass published on Sunday, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said any European troop contingents sent to Ukraine would be considered by Russian forces as legitimate military targets.
Lavrov said:
These ambitions (of European officials) have literally blinded them. Not only do they not care about the Ukrainians but they do not care about their people either.
This is the only way to explain the fact that there is still talk in Europe about sending military forces to Ukraine as part of the so-called coalition of the willing. We have said many times that in this case our armed forces would view them as a legitimate target.
The Mariupol Drama Theatre, destroyed in a Russian airstrike in 2022 while hundreds of civilians were sheltering in its basement, has reopened (you can read more about the strike and the importance of its reconstruction to the Kremlin in this story). Here are some pictures showing the building’s dramatic transformation:
Kyiv will lift martial law only when Russia’s full-scale invasion ends and after Ukraine receives security guarantees from the west, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.
“First of all, we all want the war to end, and only then will martial law be lifted. That is the only way. However, the lifting of martial law will occur at the moment when Ukraine obtains security guarantees,” Zelenskyy was quoted as having told journalists.
“Without security guarantees, this war cannot be considered truly over. We cannot acknowledge that it has ended, because with such a neighbour there remains a risk of renewed aggression.”
Under martial law, Ukrainian men aged between 18 and 60, with some exceptions, are prohibited from leaving the country because they might be called up for military service (men aged 25 to 60 can be conscripted into the armed forces). Martial law also prevents regular parliamentary and presidential elections being held.
Zelenskyy’s five-year term as president was due to end in May 2024, but the Ukrainian constitution prohibits elections in wartime (due to security, logistical and political considerations). Moscow claims, without evidence, that Zelenksyy is an illegitimate leader, despite the Ukrainian leader winning the 2019 election with over 70% of the vote. Donald Trump has accused him of clinging on to power.
Kremlin agrees with Trump that Ukraine talks in their final stage
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists this morning that Moscow agreed with Donald Trump’s assessment that talks to end the war were in their final stage.
As a reminder, Trump said a draft agreement to end the war was nearly “95% done”. “I really think we are closer than ever with both sides,” he said, though he added that “one or two very thorny issues” remain.
Although the Kremlin says it agrees that negotiations are yielding results, Moscow has so far refused to budge from its maximalist demands throughout the talks, making a real chance for a lasting peace elusive.
Russian troops have taken control of the village of Dibrova in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the defence ministry said this morning, in an update we have not yet been able to independently verify.
Trump and Putin to hold another call 'very soon', Kremlin says
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also said that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold another phone call “very soon” after the two leaders spoke before the US president had his meeting with Zelenskyy in Florida yesterday.
Writing on Truth Social before the meeting with Zelenskyy on Sunday, Trump described his one-hour-15-minute call with his Russian counterpart as “good and very productive”. We do not know when the next Trump-Putin phone call will take place.
Ukraine should withdraw troops from part of Donbas its controls if it wants peace, Kremlin says
Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said on Monday that control over Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region remains another unresolved issue.
Moscow controls about 75% of the Donetsk region, and about 99% of the neighbouring Luhansk (known collectively as Donbas).
The Kremlin said on Monday that Ukraine should withdraw its troops from the part of Donbas that it still controls if it wanted peace and that if Kyiv did not reach a deal then it would lose more territory.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the idea of a free economic zone in Donbas when asked this morning. Zelenskyy said earlier this month that the US wants Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the Donbas region, and Washington would then create a “free economic zone” in the parts Kyiv controls.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Zelenskyy said we “have to respect our law and our people” and the “territory which we control”.
“And of course, our attitude is very clear,” he added. “That’s why President Trump said this is a very tough question.”
Trump also described Donbas as an “unresolved” issue, but said they were “getting a lot closer” to reaching an agreement.
Zelenskyy says status of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remains unresolved in 20-point peace plan
Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed this morning that control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – Europe’s biggest – remained unresolved.
Donald Trump said the status of the Russian-occupied plant was discussed “at length” yesterday.
Speaking to reporters about the plant after the bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy ended, the US president said: “President Putin is actually working with Ukraine on getting it open.”
“He’s been very good in that sense. He wants to see that open.” “He hasn’t hit it with missiles,” Trump added.
Under the US plan to end the war, the US, Russia and Ukraine would run the facility and profit from it jointly, but Kyiv reportedly wants to exclude Russia and operate the plant on equal footing with Washington.
The future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which Russia took control of in March 2022, is one of the remaining sticking points in negotiations.
Almost all countries consider that it belongs to Ukraine but Russia says it is owned by Russia and a unit of Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear corporation runs the plant.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion was launched, there have been numerous safety concerns at the plant, including power outages and nearby shelling.
A monitoring mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been stationed there for over three years, but Russian authorities have been accused of regularly restricting access to the plant, which is located in Enerhodar on the banks of the Dnipro river and the Kakhovka reservoir.
It is not currently producing electricity but relies on external power to keep the nuclear material cool and avoid a meltdown.
The head of the plant, Ramil Galiyev, said on Monday that the facility could restart power generation by the middle of 2027 if the war concludes in the near future.
Galiyev said “serious issues” at the plant would have to be addressed first, including replenishing the cooling pond and preparing railway tracks.
Both Russia and Ukraine regularly accuse one another of shelling the plant, risking a nuclear disaster.
Al Jazeera has some quotes Zelenskyy gave reporters about the US security guarantees he reportedly agreed with Trump during their meeting (see opening post for more details). Here are some quotes from the Ukrainian leader:
In the documents, it is for 15 years, with the possibility of extending these security guarantees. I raised this issue with the president, I told him that we have a war going on, and it has been going on for almost 15 years, so I really wanted the guarantees to be longer …
I told him that we really wanted to consider the possibility of 30, 40, 50 years, and this would then be a historic decision by President Trump. The president said that he would think about it.
Zelenskyy says he wants Kyiv to host US-Europe-Ukraine meeting in 'coming days'
Zelenskyy also said he wants Kyiv to host a meeting with European and American officials in the “coming days” to work on documents to end the war.
“We want this meeting to take place, and I believe we will do everything possible for it to finally be held in Ukraine,” Zelensky told journalists a day after the Florida talks with Trump, adding that the meeting would be “at the adviser level”.
Zelenskyy says meeting with Russia will come if Trump and European leaders agree on peace framework
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also told reporters this morning that a meeting with Russia would be possible after the US and European leaders agreed on a Ukraine-proposed peace plan to end the war.
Donald Trump told the media yesterday he believed that there could be a trilateral meeting between Russia, Ukraine and the US “at the right time” and appeared to suggest that Russian President Vladmir Putin “wants to see it happen”.
Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin have not met since December 2019. The meeting, mediated by the leaders of France and Germany, aimed to revive efforts to resolve Kyiv’s then five-year conflict with Russian-backed separatists who had held a broad swath of south-eastern Ukraine since 2014.
In May 2025, the Russian president declined to travel to Istanbul for talks with Zelenskyy, rejecting the Ukrainian president’s bold proposal for a face-to-face meeting in Turkey to discuss peace.
Zelenskyy says plan includes US security guarantees for 15 years, although he asked for more
We are restarting our live coverage of the war in Ukraine and the diplomatic efforts to bring it to an end after nearly four years of conflict following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters via WhatsApp this morning that he asked Donald Trump to provide security guarantees of up to 50 years during their high stakes meeting at the US president’s residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, yesterday.
Zelenskyy said that, instead, a draft peace framework envisages US security guarantees for Ukraine for 15 years.
It is not clear what form these commitments would take, but the Ukrainian leader has been pushing for “article-5-like” security guarantees from Europe and the US, referring to Nato’s founding principle that an attack on one member should be seen as an attack on all.
Zelenskyy has said US security guarantees for Ukraine under the revised 20-point proposal to end the war have been 100% agreed, though Trump was more cautious, putting the figure at more like 95%.
Both leaders said progress had been made during the Florida talks and stressed that the lengthy peace talks would continue. Trump, however, cautioned there were “one or two tough” outstanding issues, including over territory, and expressed sympathy with Russia not wanting a ceasefire. “You have to understand the other side,” he said.
Trump said that a proposal to turn eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Russia largely controls, into a demilitarised zone remains “unresolved”, adding that it will become clear within weeks if the war can end.
Stay with us as we bring you all the latest news updates and analysis.
