Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky while meeting with so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ European leaders in London on Monday definitively ruled out that his country will agree to cede territory as part of a peace deal.
He specified that the question of territorial compromise is why he has not reached agreement on Donald Trump’s peace deal. “There are visions of the US, Russia and Ukraine – and we don’t have a unified view on Donbas,” Zelensky told Bloomberg.
Zelensky also wants much firmer security guarantees in the Washington plan. “There is one question I — and all Ukrainians — want to get an answer to: if Russia again starts a war, what will our partners do,” he said shortly before meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz.
But the US peace plan hinges precisely on offering some level of significant territorial compromise, given that Moscow – which has the clear upper hand militarily – considers anything less to be an automatic non-starter not worth even discussing.
President Trump has recently declared that if Zelensky rejects the US plan, he should be ready to fight Russia alone and with much less Washington help. But is Trump ready to cut off weapons supplies altogether?
Likely he’ll be content with Europe buying them, and still transferring them to Kiev. But all of this could mean that US intel sharing is finally cut off.
Meanwhile Trump has belittled ‘weak’ Europe for seeking to scrap together a counter-plan:
President Trump mocked Europe’s involvement on Monday, sharing an opinion piece which praises him for sideling “impotent Europeans” from the Ukraine peace talks. Trump has also criticized Zelensky, accusing him of not reading the latest peace proposals.
As for the US peace plan, it appears to have been primarily drafted by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev – but so far the Zelensky government has complained that it’s being cut out of the process.
Zelensky has throughout the war consistently rejected any proposal which features territorial concessions. He is supported especially be Ukrainian hardliners, both in the military and in parliament.
Kiev and EU’s maximalist counter-demands…
European counter-plan. Ukraine NATO membership up to NATO; no territorial concessions; ceasefire along contact line; no cap on Ukrainian military; EU membership; reconstruction to be paid by Russia. pic.twitter.com/YBEDLPydFp
— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) November 23, 2025
Now he’s seeking to get European leaders to back him up, and they appear to be doing so. This is all a recipe for keeping the endless war going with no end in sight, and the proxy conflict nature of it continues to get dangerously out of hand.
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