Zelensky Publicly Rejected Trump’s Peace Plan, Preferring Push For Maximalist Total Victory Scenario

Even as talks progress and President Donald Trump says there is hope for a deal, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky made clear he rejects President Donald Trump’s proposal to recognise Russia’s occupation of Crimea as a price of peace, saying the Ukrainian constitution calls for nothing less than absolute victory.

This week, President Donald Trump said in interview with Time Magazine that one of the ultimate outcomes of the war will be that “Crimea will stay with Russia”, and later that a deal was close, with Ukraine and Russia needing now to meet in person in negotiations for the first time to “finish it off”.

Yet the rhetoric coming from Kyiv in recent days is far from complimentary about President Trump’s proposals. An American blueprint for peace in Ukraine was put before combatants this week and quickly rejected as politically impossible by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who cited the national constitution as making anything but total victory impossible.

The United States “offered its vision”, Zelensky said before leaving South Africa, stating Ukraine had made counter-proposals in return. Per Ukrainian state media, these included further calls for major Western military — as Ukraine has persistently asked for over the course of months — support including the deployment of “contingents” of foreign armed forces to the country for peacekeeping.

Also raised was Ukraine’s ultimate ask for peace: security guarantees in case of future Russian aggression, which it likens to NATO’s article five mutual defence clause.

“This document is on Trump’s desk”, and “we are awaiting a response,” Zelensky said, saying of the requests: “We want strong players among the security guarantors, those who have power.

“Those who are not afraid of Russia and who have influence on Russia. Certainly, economic, certainly, historical. Of course, there should be the United States of America, of course, there should be Europe because we are in Europe”.

While the United States has baulked at the prospect of setting up a nuclear trigger in Ukraine, perhaps the greater stumbling block to achieving a workable peace agreement is President Zelensky’s insistence that he would do nothing in contradiction of the letter of the Ukrainian constitution.

While this is doubtless Zelensky’s sworn duty as President, given the constitution states the nation’s borders are “indivisible and inviolable”, this essentially locks him and Ukraine into pushing for a maximalist total victory, with every square yard of the nation’s United Nations-recognised territory liberated. Three years of brutal fighting and hundreds of thousands of lives have yet to achieve this goal.

President Zelensky said of this position that he would accept only a total defeat of the Russian invasion, a peace on unobtainable terms: “Anything that contradicts our values or our Constitution cannot be included in any agreements”.

He said, further on Friday: “Our position is unchanged: only the Ukrainian people have the right to decide which territories are Ukrainian. The Constitution of Ukraine states that all temporarily occupied territories are temporarily occupied.

“They all belong to Ukraine, to the Ukrainian people. Ukraine will not legally recognize any temporarily occupied territories. I think this is an absolutely fair position. It is legal not only from the point of view of the Constitution of Ukraine, but also from the point of view of international law”.

Of course, in the case of the Ukrainian government really wanting peace the constitution could be amended. But until that time comes, plenty more constitutionalist obstructions can be found, such as any changes to the document needing to be ratified by a national referendum, and elections being impossible under wartime conditions and martial law, which is also Zelensky’s rationale for not having had to face re-election yet.

This week, President Trump said in interview with Time Magazine that one of the ultimate outcomes of the war will be that “Crimea will stay with Russia”. Time related through the transcript of President Trump’s remarks:

…will they be able to get it back? They’ve had their Russians. They’ve had their submarines there for long before any period that we’re talking about, for many years. The people speak largely Russian in Crimea… Crimea will stay with Russia. And Zelensky understands that, and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time. It’s been with them long before Trump came along. Again, this is Obama’s war.

In other public remarks, President Trump had said: “Well, it depends what territory… we’ll do the best we can, working with Ukraine… but they lost a lot of territory. When you say Crimea, that was handed over during a president named Barack Hussein Obama. That had nothing to do with me.”

This has prompted a flurry of responses given many European states have likewise pushed for a total-victory outcome too, at least in public. Meanwhile President Trump continues to push both sides to set aside their priors and hasten to peace for the sake of thousands of lives.

The U.S. President has dinged Russia for continuing major strikes against Ukraine, and Ukraine for finding excuses not to come to the bargaining table.

One of the steps on the U.S.-designed path to peace is Ukraine signing up to President Trump’s minerals deal, a device to help the American taxpayer recuperate its considerable costs in underwriting Ukrainian defence while also giving Kyiv the reassurance that America has a long-term financial interest in the stability of the country. President Trump expressed his anger on Friday that this deal still hadn’t been ratified by Kyiv.

As reported, he wrote while crossing the Atlantic to attend the funeral of the Pope in Rome: “Ukraine, headed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not signed the final papers on the very important Rare Earths Deal with the United States. It is at least three weeks late. Hopefully, it will be signed IMMEDIATELY”.