Trump says Zelenskyy hasn’t read US peace proposal; talks move to London

Tensions are mounting once again between U.S. President Donald Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the White House leader accused Ukraine’s head of state of not even reading the U.S.’ peace proposals yet.

“I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago,” Trump told reporters on Sunday night. “His people love it, but he hasn’t [read it],” Trump added.

“Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country when you think of it, but Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy is fine with it,” Trump said.

It’s uncertain which version of the U.S.-backed peace plan for Ukraine Trump was referring to but the president’s comments came a day after talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials ended in Miami without an apparent agreement over the latest version of a draft peace plan.

There have been several versions of the purported peace plan as Russia and Ukraine have haggled — via their American intermediaries — over key details within the deal, particularly when it comes to demands for territorial concessions by Russia and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg remarked Sunday that a deal to end the war was “really close” and that it depended on resolving two main outstanding issues: the future of Ukraine’s Donbas eastern region, which is broadly occupied by Russian forces, and the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

Ukraine has given a more cautious appraisal of the talks’ progress with Zelenskyy saying in his nightly address Sunday that the Miami talks — held between his new chief negotiator Rustem Umerov and Ukraine’s military chief of general staff, General Andriy Hnatov, and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner — were “constructive, though not easy.”

Zelenskyy said he would have a detailed debrief with his negotiating team in person rather than over the phone, noting, somewhat pointedly, that “some matters can only be discussed in person.”